Linebacker Alexander comes with high price tag for 49ers

Are the 49ers repeating their Reuben Foster mistake?

According to published reporters, the 49ers agreed to contract terms on Monday with Foster’s replacement - free-agent linebacker Kwon Alexander, who played the first four seasons of his career with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Alexander will take Foster’s position as the 49ers’ starting weak-side linebacker. The 49ers released Foster on Nov. 25, 2018, roughly a year and a half after trading up from the second round to draft him with the 31st pick in Round 1 of the 2017 draft.

Alexander’s contract is a four-year deal worth up to $54 million, with $27 million guaranteed. This contract will make him the highest-paid inside linebacker in NFL history - he will make an average of $13.5 million per season from the 49ers. The contract will not be official until free agency begins on Wednesday at 1 p.m. Pacific Time.

Alexander, 24, comes with issues. He tore his anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) on Oct. 22, 2018. There’s a theme here. His $13.5 average annual salary is the second highest on the 49ers behind quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo, who also tore his ACL last season. The fifth-highest average annual salary on the 49ers belongs to running back Jerick McKinnon, who tore his ACL last season, too.

The 49ers have many millions devoted to ACL rehabilitation projects.

Alexander suffered his season-ending ACL tear Week 7,?just before halftime of the Buccaneers’ 26-23 win over the Cleveland Browns. With 18 seconds left in the second quarter, Alexander blitzed up the middle and ran straight for Browns quarterback Baker Mayfield, who slid to his left to avoid the blitzing linebacker. Alexander reacted quickly, planted hard on his left leg and his knee gave out.

Alexander’s stats are impressive. He grew up in Oxford, Alabama, and played college football at Louisiana State. The Buccaneers selected him with the 25th pick in the fourth round of the 2015 draft, and as a rookie he played 12 games and recorded 93 tackles. He missed the final four games of the 2015 season because the NFL suspended him for violating the league’s policy on performance-enhancing substances. He reportedly tested positive for a banned substance.

Alexander returned to the Bucs in 2016, played all 16 games and recorded 145 tackles - third most in the NFL that season.

In 2017, Alexander missed four games with a pulled hamstring, but still managed to record 97 tackles in 12 games, and make the Pro Bowl for the first and only time of his career.

In 2018, Alexander recorded 45 tackles during six games before he tore his ACL. He was on pace to finish the season with 120 tackles, which would have tied him for 17th most in the NFL.

While Alexander racked up lots of tackles the past four seasons, he also missed lots of them - 78 to be exact, by far the most in the NFL. No other player missed more than 50 tackles during that time.

Since 2015, Alexander has sat out 18 of 64 games due to injury or suspension, meaning he has missed 28 percent of his team’s games. He will join a 49ers organization that has dealt with tremendous injury issues the past two seasons. Since 2017, 41 players on the 49ers have spent time on the Injured Reserve list.

Alexander will replace another linebacker who also missed lots of time since entering the league in 2017 - Foster. As a rookie, Foster missed six games with a high-ankle sprain. In his second season, he missed two games due to suspension for violating the NFL’s personal conduct policy, and another eight after the 49ers released him and the NFL placed him on the Commissioner’s Exempt list. The 49ers cut Foster because on Nov. 24, 2018, police arrested him for the third time in 12 months, and the second time for domestic violence. In all three cases, the district attorney dropped the charges.

The 49ers drafted Foster even though they knew he was a risk. The NFL sent him home from the Scouting Combine after he screamed at a student hospital worker during a medical checkup. Some NFL teams removed Foster from their draft board altogether because of that incident, but not the 49ers. They 49ers took him anyway. At the time, general manager John Lynch said Foster was the third-highest-graded player on the 49ers’ draft board despite his red flags.

The risk of drafting Foster didn’t pay off for the 49ers - he now is on the Washington Redskins roster. Meaning the 49ers wasted a first-round pick on him, and now they’ve may have made another risky move to salvage their initial mistake.

The 49ers haven’t said when Alexander will return to the field, or if he will be ready for the start of the 2019 regular season.