49ers trade Eli Harold — Elvis entering the building soon?

Fooch’s update: Adam Schefter is reporting the condition on the seventh round pick is that Eli Harold must remain on the Lions roster for four weeks.

The San Francisco 49ers have made a trade. The team traded Eli Harold to the Detroit Lions, per multiple sources. Lions beat writer Kyle Meinke is reporting the deal is for a conditional 2020 seventh round pick. The move is not surprising as Harold is entering the final year of his deal and is one of the holdovers from the Trent Baalke era. John Lynch and Kyle Shanahan have overhauled the roster over the past year and a half, unloading numerous players that joined the team before their arrival.

The move raises a couple questions. The first is, who will play the SAM linebacker role. Harold was the starting SAM, and got a sizable majority of the snaps last week against the Houston Texans. Harold played 27 snaps, while Mark Nzeocha (3) and Pita Taumoepenu (8) played a combined 11 snaps. Robert Saleh said Dekoda Watson is transitioning into a primarily edge rusher role, but maybe he ends up back in the SAM role. Nzeocha has three seasons under his belt, while Pita T was effectively red-shirted last season.

The second question is if this means we might see the return of edge rusher Elvis Dumervil. The 49ers signed him to a one-year deal last year, with a team option for 2018. They declined the option, even though he had been arguably their most efficient pass rusher. Over the past week, Kyle Shanahan and Robert Saleh have both gotten questions about whether or not the 49ers would bring back Dumervil to bolster the pass rush. While Shanahan and the coaching staff have every confidence in the world that Dumervil doesn’t need a training camp to get up to speed, there was no room on the roster for him.

Now that the team has traded Harold to the Lions, could Dumervil be the one who takes his open spot on the roster. There is no doubt that the 49ers defensive line has been trying to improve it’s pass rush. While DeForest Buckner is the star of the unit, he can’t be everywhere at once, as much as we all wish he could be.