Fans can get very frustrated when they always hear that their favorite team was interested in a player but failed to land him. It can get even more frustrating when that happens over and over. The Niner Faithful are no different.

The Carolina Panthers signed former San Francisco 49ers safety Eric Reid to a one-year deal on Thursday. Shortly after the news broke, a report came out that the 49ers were interested in signing him as well this week. Reid elected to go to the Panthers rather than re-join his old team.


Anyone who has followed the 49ers this offseason knows the door has been open for Reid to return to the team — but as a backup. San Francisco has its established starters at safety in Jaquiski Tartt and Adrian Colbert. That is unlikely to change anytime soon. However, injuries to both players had the 49ers looking at a potential reunion with Reid.

Head coach Kyle Shanahan explained in his own words during a late-Thursday interview on KNBR why the 49ers missed out on signing Reid.

"We have two safeties who are down with Tartt and Colbert," Shanahan said. "They're questionable for this week. They've still got a chance to play, but we're not sure, so we brought in two safeties (on Tuesday) to work out to see.

"E. Reid's a guy that we would love to have here in that situation. It was harder for us just because we don't know what's going on with our starting safeties. We paid Tartt this year. That's why we didn't go after E. Reid (this offseason) because we decided to pay Tartt.

"With those guys not for sure being able to play, we'd love to get a guy in here like Eric Reid. The thing that made it hard for us is we're not putting Tartt and Colbert on IR. You can't pay someone as much money and things like that until you put your starter on IR and you have an open position.


"It made a lot more sense for him to go to Carolina. They put their safety on IR so they have an open position and they need him to come in and start, I would think, the rest of the year.

"They definitely got a good player. He'll definitely help them. I wish he could be here, but it wasn't the right situation for him or us to make it happen."

You can listen to the entire interview with Shanahan below.



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