Reuben Foster has again jeopardized his future in San Francisco, and the only question that seems to remain is where John Lynch and to a lesser extent Kyle Shanahan draw their line of no return.
The 49er linebacker was arrested Sunday morning in Santa Clara on a charge related to domestic violence and held without bail. It is the latest in a series of troubling incidents for the Alabama product, the most benign of which was his recent arrest in Tuscaloosa for misdemeanor marijuana possession, and brings back for another examination general manager Lynch’s words after the team cut safety Tramaine Brock for allegedly assaulting his girlfriend last April.
“As those situations arise and, hopefully, there won’t be a lot them, we’re going to treat each one of them as a unique and different situation,” Lynch said at the time, speaking in general terms about off-field legal incidents. “That’s what we did the other day.”
Taking such incidents as they come is a dangerous standard to set, and has undone the 49ers in other instances, Ray McDonald most notably. Lynch inherits the fallout from that case because the 49ers are a living and continuing thing and what they have done in the past, good and ill, is part of Lynch’s benefits package.
Thus, Foster and the adjudication of his case will be measured against that of Brock, and before that McDonald, and Bruce Miller, and Ahmad Brooks. Lynch acted decisively in the Brock case, which happened in his third month on the job, and that was without waiting for a legal disposition. What he does now, with a more important player to the team’s future but against a backdrop of dramatically less tolerance toward domestic violence, will help define the 49ers’ true place in the greater community. More people will care that he acquired and signed the quarterback of the future, but moments like this will last just as long.
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