Brandon Aiyuk is a 49er! Pick #25, 2020 NFL Draft

Originally posted by Lurker:

Originally posted by WINiner:
The 49ers hopefully learned a valuable lesson. The contract stalemate stretched out far too long in the offseason/preseason. Aiyuk was obviously not ready to play when he did and IMO his lack of conditioning likely had at least something to do with the injury. Aiyuk will probably never be the same and won't come close to producing to his contract. Hopefully, the team sees and owns their part in his injury and avoids similar holdouts in the future.

How does the team prevent the contract holdout? Do they just give the player whatever amount of money they are asking for? That doesn't seem realistic.

I don't think most teams are surprised when negotiations with some players are more difficult than others. The 49ers should have a plan in place to address those situations early. At this point, the 49ers have set the precedence that if you hold out all off and push them to the wire the 49ers buckle and players get closer to what they want than the team does in contract negotiations.

How much cap space do the 49ers gain if they traded Aiyuk before April 1st?

Originally posted by 49erFaithful6:

Originally posted by DRCHOWDER:
Its 2025, medicine has advanced and like genus mentioned hes younger and should heal better and faster. It's not far fetched to say that Wk1 is a possibility.

yes, we can rebuild him was the $6 million man. BA is the $120m man

Inflation….

Originally posted by bzborow1:
If you are the 49ers I think you should listen to the offers that are out there and if you get an offer you like, take it. I don't think the 49ers should be rushing to rid the contract necessarily. Aiyuk is a good player and his value is at its lowest right now. What we don't know is the extent to which the 49ers have been given orders to cut its spending.

I agree with that. Teams should always listen(doesn't hurt to listen) just don't want them to sell the guy for pennies on the dollar.

I always think back to AJ Brown getting traded from the Titans. How are they looking at WR now? We know Eagles aren't winning anything without Brown.

Originally posted by WINiner:
The 49ers hopefully learned a valuable lesson. The contract stalemate stretched out far too long in the offseason/preseason. Aiyuk was obviously not ready to play when he did and IMO his lack of conditioning likely had at least something to do with the injury. Aiyuk will probably never be the same and won't come close to producing to his contract. Hopefully, the team sees and owns their part in his injury and avoids similar holdouts in the future.

Why would you think Paraag would have learned a lesson? Aiyuk's contract negotiation wasn't some exceptional case. Multiple players have had negotiations lead late into the offseason and/or into holdouts. Paraag ghosted Aiyuk and his agent for TWO ENTIRE MONTHS in the process. Had Aiyuk not demanded a trade to get Paraag to come back to the negotiating table, the ghosting would have gone on longer. The only thing that has happened since the Aiyuk extension is ownership taking Paraag's side on team spending. He's being empowered by ownership to keep doing what he does.

Nobody is coming off of the couch in-game shape to play WR and playing without a snap count. Aiyuk didn't come in overweight. He didn't even come in unpracticed. He actually published videos during the offseason of him working out and catching balls on his own.

The irrational hate this fanbase has for players...

Originally posted by Kolohe:
How much cap space do the 49ers gain if they traded Aiyuk before April 1st?

tl;dr - If traded before the 2025 option bonus pays out, they would lose 7.209M on top of the 11.191M already allocated in 2025 (18.4M in total) in exchange for saving 59.084M against future salary caps.

Aiyuk has a 11.191M cap hit currently. There are 4 prorations of 4.6M from his signing bonus that is unaccounted-for against the 2025-28 salary caps. He currently has 20.875M fully guaranteed in 2025, 4M guaranteed against injury in 2025, and 27M guaranteed against injury in 2026. Those guarantees against injury vest into a full guarantee on April 1st. Aiyuk is injured and won't pass a physical before April 1, so his guarantees against injury are practically guaranteed at this point.

If Aiyuk is traded before his 2025 option bonus pays out, the 49ers would only be on the hook for money already spent. The 4 signing bonus prorations accelerate into a single dead-money cap hit of 18.4M in 2025, which is 7.209M more than his scheduled 11.191M cap hit. Trading Aiyuk would remove the following allocations for money already spent or guaranteed from their books in future years. They would save 16.223M in 2026, 14.158M in 2027, 14.158M in 2028, 9.558M in 2029, and 4.987M in 2030.

__PRESENT__PRESENT

Originally posted by WINiner:
I don't think most teams are surprised when negotiations with some players are more difficult than others. The 49ers should have a plan in place to address those situations early. At this point, the 49ers have set the precedence that if you hold out all off and push them to the wire the 49ers buckle and players get closer to what they want than the team does in contract negotiations.

It all depends if they view you as a building block or not and also every team has this issue so there really isn't a tried and true way to handle this. If you become too much of a hard a** then the agents aren't going to want to deal with you and direct their clients elsewhere.

Just look at the Eagles and the Reddick situation last year. They traded for him and he sat out out because he didnt get a new contract. The Eagles stood firm but had egg on their face the entire time untill he finally showed up in week 7 or 8. Can you imagine how bad it would be here if we traded for a player and they didnt even show up?
__PRESENT

Originally posted by miked1978:
__PRESENT__PRESENT

Originally posted by WINiner:
I don't think most teams are surprised when negotiations with some players are more difficult than others. The 49ers should have a plan in place to address those situations early. At this point, the 49ers have set the precedence that if you hold out all off and push them to the wire the 49ers buckle and players get closer to what they want than the team does in contract negotiations.

It all depends if they view you as a building block or not and also every team has this issue so there really isn't a tried and true way to handle this. If you become too much of a hard a** then the agents aren't going to want to deal with you and direct their clients elsewhere.

Just look at the Eagles and the Reddick situation last year. They traded for him and he sat out out because he didnt get a new contract. The Eagles stood firm but had egg on their face the entire time untill he finally showed up in week 7 or 8. Can you imagine how bad it would be here if we traded for a player and they didnt even show up?
__PRESENT

I think you meant the Jets.

But I agree with your point. It's a hard line and teams have to find it. Part of the issue is players know when they have all the leverage. CMC knew it, Trent knew it. I find it hard to fault them for it even though I hated it as a fan, especially in the case of Trent who played in his first SB and arguably had one of his worst games as a 49er in it. Killed a drive all by himself with penalties and then got stonewalled by a guy KC brought up from the PS on a key run play.

But like I said, I also don't blame them because the 49ers let them do it giving them all that leverage. CMC understood how critical he was to the offense and ensured he got his bump and guaranteed money, I totally understand given the position. And Trent knew he had us over a barrel as soon as we didn't draft a single OT in the draft. If anything we should've at least pretended Puni would be an OT but Trent would've seen through it anyways.

Best way to stay ahead of these deals is insulate your roster with young depth pieces so you could tell those guys "we'd love to have you here but at this cost, if you can't accept that we'll roll with the backups"

...but if you don't have any legit backups well good luck keeping up that lie. That's why Nick had us as well. Anyone recall the edges we had here without Nick?

But bringing this back to Aiyuk - I fully expected Kyle to feed BA given how things ended in 2023 and I believe he was going to change things on offense a bit more to use BA's skills and things obviously fell apart cuz of him being rusty, CMC not being out there and then BAs injury. But I also believe that Kyle wanted him here for a reason and can't see that reason changing. So now we wait.

Originally posted by Typecast:

Originally posted by WINiner:
The 49ers hopefully learned a valuable lesson. The contract stalemate stretched out far too long in the offseason/preseason. Aiyuk was obviously not ready to play when he did and IMO his lack of conditioning likely had at least something to do with the injury. Aiyuk will probably never be the same and won't come close to producing to his contract. Hopefully, the team sees and owns their part in his injury and avoids similar holdouts in the future.

Why would you think Paraag would have learned a lesson? Aiyuk's contract negotiation wasn't some exceptional case. Multiple players have had negotiations lead late into the offseason and/or into holdouts. Paraag ghosted Aiyuk and his agent for TWO ENTIRE MONTHS in the process. Had Aiyuk not demanded a trade to get Paraag to come back to the negotiating table, the ghosting would have gone on longer. The only thing that has happened since the Aiyuk extension is ownership taking Paraag's side on team spending. He's being empowered by ownership to keep doing what he does.

Nobody is coming off of the couch in-game shape to play WR and playing without a snap count. Aiyuk didn't come in overweight. He didn't even come in unpracticed. He actually published videos during the offseason of him working out and catching balls on his own.

The irrational hate this fanbase has for players...

You can't be so naive to believe a player working out alone is anywhere close to being in game shape. I mean it's in the "NFL players guide on bargaining in public". Step 4: Leak a video of you working out to show the fans how dedicated you are...

You're also quite full of yourself if you actually believe that the team and his agents didn't speak for a full two months.

I love my 49ers players, but am and ALWAYS will be the team, the team, the team.

Originally posted by genus49:

Originally posted by miked1978:
__PRESENT__PRESENT

Originally posted by WINiner:
I don't think most teams are surprised when negotiations with some players are more difficult than others. The 49ers should have a plan in place to address those situations early. At this point, the 49ers have set the precedence that if you hold out all off and push them to the wire the 49ers buckle and players get closer to what they want than the team does in contract negotiations.

It all depends if they view you as a building block or not and also every team has this issue so there really isn't a tried and true way to handle this. If you become too much of a hard a** then the agents aren't going to want to deal with you and direct their clients elsewhere.

Just look at the Eagles and the Reddick situation last year. They traded for him and he sat out out because he didnt get a new contract. The Eagles stood firm but had egg on their face the entire time untill he finally showed up in week 7 or 8. Can you imagine how bad it would be here if we traded for a player and they didnt even show up?
__PRESENT

I think you meant the Jets.

But I agree with your point. It's a hard line and teams have to find it. Part of the issue is players know when they have all the leverage. CMC knew it, Trent knew it. I find it hard to fault them for it even though I hated it as a fan, especially in the case of Trent who played in his first SB and arguably had one of his worst games as a 49er in it. Killed a drive all by himself with penalties and then got stonewalled by a guy KC brought up from the PS on a key run play.

But like I said, I also don't blame them because the 49ers let them do it giving them all that leverage. CMC understood how critical he was to the offense and ensured he got his bump and guaranteed money, I totally understand given the position. And Trent knew he had us over a barrel as soon as we didn't draft a single OT in the draft. If anything we should've at least pretended Puni would be an OT but Trent would've seen through it anyways.

Best way to stay ahead of these deals is insulate your roster with young depth pieces so you could tell those guys "we'd love to have you here but at this cost, if you can't accept that we'll roll with the backups"

...but if you don't have any legit backups well good luck keeping up that lie. That's why Nick had us as well. Anyone recall the edges we had here without Nick?

But bringing this back to Aiyuk - I fully expected Kyle to feed BA given how things ended in 2023 and I believe he was going to change things on offense a bit more to use BA's skills and things obviously fell apart cuz of him being rusty, CMC not being out there and then BAs injury. But I also believe that Kyle wanted him here for a reason and can't see that reason changing. So now we wait.

First and foremost Aiyuk has to get healthy and show he can still play. I doubt Kyle will change the offense to try and feature him. He hasn't shown that he can succeed when he doen't have a guy like Deebo drawing coverage. Maybe Pearsall will become that guy but we don't know yet.

I doubt he get's traded this year becaue teams aren't going to give much for a guy coming off that injury. Maybe next season if he shows he's recovered enough that they can gert t least a 2nd round pick for him.

Originally posted by CatchMaster80:
First and foremost Aiyuk has to get healthy and show he can still play. I doubt Kyle will change the offense to try and feature him. He hasn't shown that he can succeed when he doen't have a guy like Deebo drawing coverage. Maybe Pearsall will become that guy but we don't know yet.

I doubt he get's traded this year becaue teams aren't going to give much for a guy coming off that injury. Maybe next season if he shows he's recovered enough that they can gert t least a 2nd round pick for him.

Man what???

Aiyuk has averaged 75 yards per game without Deebo playing or missing the majority of the game.

He also clearly draws the bulk of the coverage.

Originally posted by genus49:

Originally posted by CatchMaster80:
First and foremost Aiyuk has to get healthy and show he can still play. I doubt Kyle will change the offense to try and feature him. He hasn't shown that he can succeed when he doen't have a guy like Deebo drawing coverage. Maybe Pearsall will become that guy but we don't know yet.

I doubt he get's traded this year becaue teams aren't going to give much for a guy coming off that injury. Maybe next season if he shows he's recovered enough that they can gert t least a 2nd round pick for him.

Man what???

Aiyuk has averaged 75 yards per game without Deebo playing or missing the majority of the game.

He also clearly draws the bulk of the coverage.

It's one thing to do it for short stretches when a player is out. Its not the same when teams know you're going to be the main guy every week. The Nners offense is designed to spread the ball around. CMC if healthy will get the msot touches but under Kyle 49er receivers split the targets pretty rvernly. I've seen games start with one WR getting the targets and then nearly disappearing for a quarter or two while a different guy gets targeted. When you have a TE like Kittle and a back like CMC WRs aren't going to get 100+ receptons and 1500 yards like some teams. If they had one of the WRs that like the ball all the time they wouldn't be happy on this team.

Originally posted by WINiner:

Originally posted by Typecast:

Originally posted by WINiner:
The 49ers hopefully learned a valuable lesson. The contract stalemate stretched out far too long in the offseason/preseason. Aiyuk was obviously not ready to play when he did and IMO his lack of conditioning likely had at least something to do with the injury. Aiyuk will probably never be the same and won't come close to producing to his contract. Hopefully, the team sees and owns their part in his injury and avoids similar holdouts in the future.

Why would you think Paraag would have learned a lesson? Aiyuk's contract negotiation wasn't some exceptional case. Multiple players have had negotiations lead late into the offseason and/or into holdouts. Paraag ghosted Aiyuk and his agent for TWO ENTIRE MONTHS in the process. Had Aiyuk not demanded a trade to get Paraag to come back to the negotiating table, the ghosting would have gone on longer. The only thing that has happened since the Aiyuk extension is ownership taking Paraag's side on team spending. He's being empowered by ownership to keep doing what he does.

Nobody is coming off of the couch in-game shape to play WR and playing without a snap count. Aiyuk didn't come in overweight. He didn't even come in unpracticed. He actually published videos during the offseason of him working out and catching balls on his own.

The irrational hate this fanbase has for players...

You can't be so naive to believe a player working out alone is anywhere close to being in game shape. I mean it's in the "NFL players guide on bargaining in public". Step 4: Leak a video of you working out to show the fans how dedicated you are...

You're also quite full of yourself if you actually believe that the team and his agents didn't speak for a full two months.

I love my 49ers players, but am and ALWAYS will be the team, the team, the team.

No, I'm not naive to think someone working out on their own is being in game shape. Did I say he was in game shape? No. Are you reading the conversations going on and not seeing people claiming he came into the season out of shape? That he was fat? Someone even asked if they were mistaking Aiyuk for Deebo...

Bro, you are here talking about him leaking video of himself when there were clips on IG from kids watching him practice at local fields. Who is really full of themselves here?

We know you care just about the team. You have to actually make up s**t and omit facts to defend them. If you want to blame anyone for Aiyuk not being ready to go at the start of the season, the blame starts with Paraag for not getting the contract done sooner. There was no reason for him to ghost Aiyuk for 2 whole months during the negotiation. The blame also goes onto Lynch for not trading him. Paraag never valued him at the market rate before August and told Lynch to trade him pre-draft. Five teams were interested then in acquiring Aiyuk but Lynch got greedy with his ask. Ultimately, Lynch and Kyle planned the roster around Aiyuk being a part of it in 2024 and going forward. Time forced Paraag to get on board with that decision.

Originally posted by CatchMaster80:

Originally posted by genus49:

Originally posted by CatchMaster80:
First and foremost Aiyuk has to get healthy and show he can still play. I doubt Kyle will change the offense to try and feature him. He hasn't shown that he can succeed when he doen't have a guy like Deebo drawing coverage. Maybe Pearsall will become that guy but we don't know yet.

I doubt he get's traded this year becaue teams aren't going to give much for a guy coming off that injury. Maybe next season if he shows he's recovered enough that they can gert t least a 2nd round pick for him.

Man what???

Aiyuk has averaged 75 yards per game without Deebo playing or missing the majority of the game.

He also clearly draws the bulk of the coverage.

It's one thing to do it for short stretches when a player is out. Its not the same when teams know you're going to be the main guy every week. The Nners offense is designed to spread the ball around. CMC if healthy will get the msot touches but under Kyle 49er receivers split the targets pretty rvernly. I've seen games start with one WR getting the targets and then nearly disappearing for a quarter or two while a different guy gets targeted. When you have a TE like Kittle and a back like CMC WRs aren't going to get 100+ receptons and 1500 yards like some teams. If they had one of the WRs that like the ball all the time they wouldn't be happy on this team.

Not everything is about receptions/targets. The passing offense requires an X receiver to be able to stretch defenses vertically so all the gadget/possession guys can feast underneath. That's Aiyuk's primary role.