Everything is going wrong at the home of last season’s Super Bowl runners-up right now. Hanging on to the slimmest of hopes to make the playoffs this season, anything less than a win against the Rams on Thursday was unacceptable. Yet the Niners fell to their fourth defeat in as much as the last 5 games, thereby falling to 6-8 for the season. Well, losing to the Rams wasn’t the only highlight of the day. Something more sinister happened with their nine-year Pro De’Vondre Campbell.
During the third quarter, when the game was still up for grabs. Campbell seemingly refused to play when the 49ers needed him to replace linebacker Dre Greenlaw. Greenlaw, playing his first game of the season after suffering an ACL injury in last year’s Super Bowl, couldn’t because of some knee tightness. So when Campbell backed off, Kyle Shanahan had no option but to call upon Demetrius Flannigan-Fowles.
However, Campbell didn’t just refuse to play. He walked back to his locker during the final quarter without playing a single snap. This incident led reporters to question Shanahan about whether he had lost the locker room. But Shanahan seemingly disagreed, saying, “I haven’t lost anybody.” He then went on to add, “That’s somebody that doesn’t want to play football. That’s pretty simple. I think our team and myself, we know how we feel about that. So, I don’t think we need to talk about him anymore.”
Well, Campbell pulling off such shocking behaviour has also led to reporters questioning his status after Thursday’s game. But Shanahan doesn’t yet have an answer to that, “I don’t know. We’ll figure something out.” As for Campbell, he just joined the Niners in the summer from Green Bay. The sole purpose of signing him was to allow Greenlaw to ease back into the team. And De’Vondre Campbell seemingly performed exceptionally well in the 12 games he started out of the Niners 13.
He recorded 79 tackles in 90% of the snaps he played for the San Fran team. But now it doesn’t look like he would play another snap for the 49ers, as the whole locker room is upset with his antics.
Seeing one of your teammates refuse to get on the pitch when your team still has a way to grab the game is insanely disrespectful. And it would surely undermine anyone who is trying to give their best to the squad. This led to one of the 49ers leaders, TE George Kittle, calling out Campbell’s decision, “I think anyone in this building that got asked to go in. I would say 100% of everybody would die to get on that football field. Whatever his decision was, it wasn’t for this organization, it wasn’t for this team and that’s on him.”
Well, those reactions didn’t end with Kittle, as their CB Charvarius Ward dropped a possible hint on his future. “I mean, if he didn’t want to play, he shouldn’t have dressed out. He coulda told them that before the game. That’s some —-a stuff to me, in my opinion. Probably gonna get cut soon, so it is what it is with that.” Ward, who is playing his 3rd game back after losing his 1-year-old daughter, shows the level of mentality some players possess, which looks missing from Campbell.
Now, only time will tell what will happen to Campbell. Considering the reaction he has received for refusing to get on the pitch, he must have surely sealed his fate in the Bay Area.
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