There must be something about the Bay Area that keeps Kendrick Bourne coming back.
Maybe it’s the fog that rolls over Levi’s Stadium in the morning, or the way the crowd paints a sea of red before every home game. Or maybe he just has unfinished business.
After resurrecting his career on a one-year deal with the 49ers in 2025, Bourne is making his free agent intentions known before he’s even hit the open market.
He wants to return to the 49ers.
“The year went great,” Bourne said on his YouTube channel last week. “Hitting free agency this year, it’s gonna be fun. I want to go back to San Fran, so that’s the plan, but it’s all got to make sense.”
Translation? He’s betting on himself again — but this time he’d prefer the long-term security to come wrapped in red and gold.
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“I’m trying to come back. Talk to Kyle (Shanahan) … I’m trying to make it happen. San Francisco is home. I’m trying to run it back,” Bourne said on Richard Sherman’s podcast.
Bourne’s candor has always been part of his charm. Earlier this month, he raised eyebrows by questioning whether the electrical substation near the team facility might explain why the grass sometimes turns browns at practice.
“I kind of buy it,” Bourne told NBC Sports. “I’m a conspiracy theorist, so I don’t know. Our grass is brown on that side and the soccer field on the other side is green. So that kind of trips me out a little bit, but I don’t know. It’s so much research they probably have to do, but whatever we can do to help prevent injuries, we got to look into. So [G.M.] John [Lynch] said he’s gonna do it, and I think he will. So it’s just crazy that that’s even a thing, but that thing is a crazy, like, I was looking at it one time at practice, and I just was like randomly kind of getting dozed off. Like, that thing is huge. Like, it’s carrying real power. So I don’t know if they can crank it more. crank it less, but I think it’s serious. I don’t know.”
He even called himself a “conspiracy theorist” about it, half-joking, half-curious. Yet whatever theories swirl in the background, they clearly aren’t strong enough to push him away from the franchise that drafted him and gave him his first real shot.
Bourne had 37 catches for 551 yards and no touchdowns with San Francisco in 2025. He averaged 14.9 yards per catch, with a season-long 56 yard catch against Tampa Bay in October.
Free agency will be “fun,” as he says. It’s also business. And if business aligns with belief, Bourne’s second act in San Francisco may not be a cameo — it could be a long-term commitment.
