De’Vondre Campbell, predictably, won’t play for the 49ers anymore after quitting on the team during their “Thursday Night Football” game, with head coach Kyle Shanahan telling reporters that the organization is just “working through the semantics” for Campbell’s exit.
“I mean you guys heard from me last night, you guys heard from our players, his actions from the game, it’s not something you can do to your team or your teammates and still get to be a part of our team,” Shanahan told reporters Friday. “We’re working through exactly the semantics of it right now, but we’ll handle the situation appropriately.”
Everything unfolded in the third quarter of San Francisco’s 12-6 loss to the Rams when Campbell told his coaching staff that he didn’t want to play anymore and walked off the field — he was standing on the sideline — toward the locker room.
Linebacker Dre Greenlaw, who injured his Achilles in the Super Bowl, made his return Thursday, which resulted in Campbell not logging a snap.
When the 49ers needed Campbell in the third quarter, though, that’s when Shanahan said he found out that the nine-year veteran — who was named a first-team All-Pro with the Packers in 2021 — no longer wanted to play.
“We were needing a starting caliber linebacker to fill in for Dre until he could get back,” Shanahan said. “We didn’t know how long that would be. I thought he had some ups and downs throughout the year. I thought he started off slow. I thought he got more used to our defense and how we expected people to play and I thought he improved throughout the year.”
Campbell was criticized by his teammates postgame, with cornerback Charvarius Ward predicting that Campbell was “probably going to get cut soon” and tight end George Kittle blasting the linebacker for the move.
“It’s just dumb. It’s just stupid. It’s very immature,” Kittle told reporters. “I just don’t see how you could do something like that to your team.”
The 49ers’ loss marked their fourth in five games, and at 6-8, the reigning NFC champions are struggling to even carve out a path to the postseason field.
San Francisco will travel to face the Dolphins next weekend before hosting the Lions, and in both of those games, as well as the others that follow this season, their defensive depth chart will look different.
Campbell’s decision Thursday certainly suggested it’d be the case, and Shanahan’s comments one day later solidified that.
“It was pretty simple to see how he was and then we moved on with our life after that,” Shanahan said, according to ESPN, when talking about Campbell and the third quarter.
