Brock Purdy Reveals De'Vondre Campbell Foreshadowed 49ers Exit

One of the top lowlights of the San Francisco 49ers' 2024 season was when linebacker De'Vondre Campbell quit on the team.

Nothing like that has ever come close to happening on the 49ers before since Kyle Shanahan and John Lynch took over in 2017.

It's not common for any team in the league. It's typically an outlier situation. However, Brock Purdy revealed while appearing on the "Bussin With the Boys" podcast that Campbell foreshadowed his exit.

"We sort of knew the day or two before that he started to show some signs of being upset about Greenlaw coming back," Purdy said. "To then, going out on the field and him just refusing to go in the game, that's when it blew our mind. Even myself, as a quarterback, I felt it on the sideline... and then all of a sudden we're on the sideline hearing 'Dude, De'Vondre's refusing to go in' and we're all like 'Oh my gosh.'

"This is the NFL. I've never even heard of that. My whole life in football, there hasn't been a teammate that's refused to play. I didn't even know that you could do that. Our whole team we were hurt. There's so much pride when you're a Niner... you take pride in going to wars with your boys and winning games and going through stuff and then, because one little thing doesn't go your way in a guy who's really well respected came back and then you refused to go in for the boys, it's like, come on. Are you really one of us?"

No one could've foreseen Campbell's dramatic and career-ending exit. Not even the signs he let on days before the game would've prepared anyone for it.

It's natural for Purdy and the rest of the 49ers players to feel disrespected by Campbell. They all said as much during the postgame interviews of that game.

As negative as that situation was, it did showcase how strong the 49ers' locker room is. Their strong culture helped weed out Campbell's negativity; thus, he took an unprofessional way out and exposed himself.