Things could be going much better for the San Francisco 49ers. The defending NFC champions have been snake bit by injuries and just a general inability to play their best football during the 2024 NFL season, and as a result, the team finds itself sitting at 6-8 and needing a miracle to make the postseason.
That included a loss to the Los Angeles Rams on Thursday Night Football this week, where both teams failed to score a touchdown but the Rams won, 12-6, in a field goal bonanza. And yet, that was not the strangest thing that happened to the Niners on Thursday. Instead, that was linebacker De’Vondre Campbell refusing to go into the game during the third quarter, with San Francisco coach Kyle Shanahan saying after the game that he told the coaching staff he just did not feel like playing and left the field.
“Yeah, he said he didn’t wanna play today,” Shanahan told the media after the game. “He didn’t, when I asked him why he didn’t wanna go in. That was in the third quarter.”
Amazon’s cameras caught Campbell walking into the locker room in the fourth quarter with his helmet in hand, and the postgame show crew couldn’t come up with any justifiable reason for walking out on the team, no matter his frustrations with getting taken out of the starting lineup for Dre Greenlaw’s return. Unsurprisingly, Campbell’s refusal to go in the game did not go over especially well with his teammates, with cornerback Charvarius Ward telling the press that Campbell is “probably gonna get cut soon.”
