During Sunday's win over the Chicago Bears, the San Francisco 49ers gave Corey Lemonier and Eli Harold a decent amount of snaps. I say this because before Aaron Lynch got hurt, we saw a stretch where they were getting work with Lynch over Brooks. A rotation is not surprising, but at one point, Brooks threw down his helmet and did not play for a brief period. When Lynch got hurt he was back on the field fairly consistently.
Jim Tomsula was asked on Wednesday whether or not Brooks had been benched at that point, along with a mention of him being seen throwing his helmet. Tomsula said, "No, he was going to go back in the game. He was going back in the game. We didn't bench him there. We don't want you throwing your helmet, that's for sure."
A quick follow up lead to this response from Tomsula:
"I expressed to Ahmad I don't want you throwing your helmet. He took his helmet and he went to the side and [senior defensive assistant/linebackers coach] Jason [Tarver] and he coached up and Ahmad was back in the game."
Matt Barrows spoke to Brooks on Wednesday, and the linebacker had this to say:
"Just disregard it," Brooks said Wednesday. "There's nothing to write about. It's not going to help the team out, so we just don't need to talk about it."
Asked if everything had been worked out, Brooks said, "Everything's not worked out, but everything is cool."
Brooks is a guy who seemingly always is on the verge of being a salary cap cut, but sticks around. He's a very solid outside linebacker, underrated in many respects. His offsides and neutral zone infraction penalties can be infuriating, but his ability to rush the passer, set the edge against the run, and drop back in coverage often offset that.
And yet, it is clear the 49ers want to find a replacement for him sooner rather than later. I can see how that might make him a little ornery about the situation. It's always been the life of NFL veterans, and is even more so with the rookie wage scale. My guess is this is Brooks' last year with the 49ers, but I think plenty of us having been saying that the last couple years.