© Joe Camporeale-USA TODAY Sports
Kyle Shanahan said he knew “right away” the 49ers would release Reuben Foster upon hearing the news of his domestic violence arrest Saturday night. Shanahan and general manager John Lynch spoke with each other about the incident shortly after it happened, slept on the news, then announced Foster’s release Sunday morning, about four hours ahead of San Francisco’s 27-9 loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
“I knew what we have told Reuben, and he didn’t do what we asked him to do,” Shanahan told reporters postgame. “As soon as he did that, I knew what decision was going to be made; it was just when.”
Shanahan said he “addressed the elephant in the room” to the his team prior to Sunday’s game. He told his team not to allow Foster’s release to be a distraction.
“There are responsibilities here that we all have to live by, and if anyone wanted to talk more about it, they can come talk to me in my locker room,” Shanahan said. “But today wasn’t the time to talk about it, and I told them we would all talk about it a lot more tomorrow.”
Foster was arrested at the Grand Hyatt Tampa Bay hotel at 9:10 p.m. ET, where the team stayed before their game on Sunday vs. the Buccaneers. Foster was booked at 11:11 p.m. ET, and no bond was immediately posted, according to the Hillsborough County Sheriff.
The woman Foster allegedly struck is Elissa Ennis, Foster’s on-and-off-again girlfriend who also accused Foster of domestic violence in February. That case, which included weapons and threats charges, was later dismissed, and Foster returned to the team in May.
Lynch and Shanahan made it clear that domestic violence would not be tolerated. They reinstated Foster with the idea that he had learned from his mistakes, but he was given a short leash moving forward, which explains his swift release.
“I care about Reuben,” Shanahan said. “I don’t think it’s just black and white all of this, neither was the last time. I believed him a lot last time. I said to you guys what we said: if that was true, it would be easy. He wouldn’t be on our team. I think the courts took care of that, but was also a lot of other things that he had made bad mistakes on, bad decisions and things that we needed him to follow by.
He struggled with that. We helped him a lot with it, and he has gotten better in that way, but it has been too much. (I) care about Reuben, but no one is more important than this team. Our No. 1 rule is you got to protect the team, and he has put us in a bad light too much. Hopefully this will fix him and he can be successful somewhere else.”