Did the 49ers do their homework on De’Vondre Campbell before they signed him this offseason?

They recently suspended him without pay for the rest of the season because he refused to play in their 12-6 loss to the Rams last Thursday. This behavior should have come as no surprise. Just last season, Campbell posted on social media that he was done playing through injuries. Then the Packers released him.

So why did the 49ers sign Campbell in the first place?

“It was tough losing Dre Greenlaw,” Shanahan explained on Wednesday. “We knew we were going to have to need a starting caliber linebacker. We had two guys that we thought we had committed that we lost in free agency and then another guy got cut after that and became available. I was with De’Vondre his rookie year in Atlanta so I knew what he was capable of. Not that I was real close or anything with the defensive guys being the offensive coordinator there and everything, but I know we liked him in that building and a lot of guys who had coached him had been good. We obviously made a mistake, but it’s not something that you don’t look into. You look into everything and you weigh the risk and reward of stuff. You weigh the situations that you have and what decisions you can make in terms of the options. And by no means was it our first option, but at the time with what went down, we thought it was our best option and it didn’t work out.”

I have two questions:

1. If Campbell was the 49ers third option, why did they give him $5 million guaranteed? That’s a lot of dough.

2. If Campbell obviously was a mistake, why did the 49ers insist on starting him over second-year linebacker all season until Thursday night?

The 49ers wasted so much time and money on a player who never should have been on the roster to begin with.