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

Niners should just post this as a response to his latest rant...

Originally posted by jimmy3233:
Shanahan while being a great coach is not a good GM. At this point, it is safe to assume he is the de facto GM of the team and can override Lynch when push comes to shove. He is the one that wanted to trade for Trey Lance (rewatch the press conference after the draft pick and Lynch states it was Kyle watching film on him and he wanted to move up to take him).

He is also responsible for this Aiyuk fiasco by overriding Lynch and management team to resign him when there seemed to be a trade to Pittsburgh or somewhere that was imminent. Aiyuk wanted to be gone, we always were paying Deebo a lot of money.

Shanahan should learn from this and really cede all control to the GM from now on. He simply cannot be GM and coach at the same time.

That being said giving Lynch's drafting numerous defensive busts in the early rounds (Solomon Thomas, Reuben Foster, Javon Kinlaw, Drake Jackson, Jiyar Brown, Ambry Thomas) and numerous lackluster signings in the offseason (Yiadom, LB who quit on team, Luke Ferrell, Javon Hargrave), I don't necessarily think Lynch should be the GM anymore.

While a disaster of a contract I guarantee you it endeared shanny to the players (hc fighting for a player to get paid).

I'm also sure paraag loves that it failed because he can go see?? No more of your bleeding heart s**t!

Originally posted by SmokeyJoe:

Originally posted by Chance:
You have put stock in unverified reports that favor Aiyuk's side of the story. There are also unverified reports that say the offer sat at 30mil through all the trade speculation. Aiyuk himself said he made it harder than it needed to be.

I don't know the specifics because there are multiple versions to choose from. What I can safely opine on is the outward behavior of both parties. Aiyuk has been a trainwreck from the trade demand to now.

And whether there were regrets from some regarding the contract, had he just acted professionally, injured or not, we'd be having a different conversation. The one thing that's clear, cutting bait from him looks more and more like the correct decision. Mistakes are made, things inevitably get messy. That's par for any franchise, but I can't say the org has done anything wrong post contract.

If we look at the sum total of how this team retains players, it's hard to argue that they aren't effective in negotiations. There have been some reports of tough negotiations, but generally we've done well to our core players and keeping things responsible with the cap.

You're confused on the timeline. The 30 million dollar offer was presented in August after the team had tabled talks for 3 months and Aiyuk's hold in began. Aiyuk formally requested a trade in mid-July. The last offer he had received was a 26m/year offer in May:

https://www.si.com/nfl/takeaways-brandon-aiyuk-49ers-negotiations

Feel free to post reports that say otherwise.

26 mil, if accurate, is a perfectly reasonable starting point. You characterize this as "significantly lower" than his market value. Really? Significantly lower? Now my memory is not great, but this starting offer would have paid him around the top ten WRs at the time, which would have been in line with his market value. 30 mil, which he ended up taking, paid him above his grade as he became the fourth highest paid WR, a tier beyond his level of play.

The language you use continues to display bias as you say the FO "ghosted" Aiyuk from that point until August. Ghosting connotes not returning one's calls. Ignoring them. We don't know how negotiations were tabled at that point. We don't know how Aiyuk may have countered the initial proposal, or whether the team left the door open for his camp to give them a number when they were ready to re-enter. The language you use matters, and for whatever reason, you seem inclined to be hyperbolic when it comes to FO decisions.

To be clear, I don't think the FO looked good with this situation. But I see no evidence they operated in bad-faith, which you seem to be implying. I think they had a number and they didn't want to go much beyond. When they offered 30, and BA strung them along, they should have traded him. The red flags were clearly visible at that point and they ignored them because they had a SB quality team and no number 1 WR.

Mistakes were made, but that's life in the NFL.

Originally posted by Chance:
26 mil, if accurate, is a perfectly reasonable starting point. You characterize this as "significantly lower" than his market value. Really? Significantly lower? Now my memory is not great, but this starting offer would have paid him around the top ten WRs at the time, which would have been in line with his market value. 30 mil, which he ended up taking, paid him above his grade as he became the fourth highest paid WR, a tier beyond his level of play.

The language you use continues to display bias as you say the FO "ghosted" Aiyuk from that point until August. Ghosting connotes not returning one's calls. Ignoring them. We don't know how negotiations were tabled at that point. We don't know how Aiyuk may have countered the initial proposal, or whether the team left the door open for his camp to give them a number when they were ready to re-enter. The language you use matters, and for whatever reason, you seem inclined to be hyperbolic when it comes to FO decisions.

To be clear, I don't think the FO looked good with this situation. But I see no evidence they operated in bad-faith, which you seem to be implying. I think they had a number and they didn't want to go much beyond. When they offered 30, and BA strung them along, they should have traded him. The red flags were clearly visible at that point and they ignored them because they had a SB quality team and no number 1 WR.

Mistakes were made, but that's life in the NFL.

26 million wasn't the starting point. It was the final offer they made for three months. The starting point was earlier, and lower. You're free to think 4m is not significantly different than what his market value was but I would disagree. It's a 13%+ discount each year, over multiple years, and that's without knowing specifics of structure including guarantees.

Market value isn't necessarily dictated by how a player ranks among his peers. It's the price he would fetch on the open market, and you can see in the reporting that he had offers as part of a trade package, from multiple teams, at or above that 30m number. That said, he was a 2nd team all pro that season (1 of 5 wide receivers who were either 1st or 2nd team all pros).

For clarity, I don't think the team acted in bad faith in the negotiation. I think they share responsibility in the delayed resolution. Both sides exercised leverage, and we've seen negotiations play out similarly with other players. I expect the team and player to work in their interests… that's normal business.

Originally posted by SmokeyJoe:

Originally posted by tankle104:
I may not remember this perfectly but if I recall, he ended up accepting the offer that was on the table for 3+ weeks. which that offer had the niners caving and giving more than they wanted to. The part that bothered me is that he held out for essentially no reason and just missed camp, came in looking like crap.

Both parties have blame though. niners shouldn't of waited to resign him, that was dumb. at the beginning of that off season - the WR market blew up. So Aiyuk wanted more money, which I understand his position. I didn't care for the way he went about it, is what it is. but Aiyuk was a stud - easily top 3 best all around WR in my opinion.

This has been a historic meltdown, IMO. I think Aiyuk is overly sensitive - which isn't good when you're professional athlete. I cant wait to eventually hear what made him do all of this. probably is that it was known people in the org didnt want to resign him or regretted doing it. which isn't a big deal.

It's right in the article I posted. They made two final offers on August 12th and he ultimately signed for a deal close to one of them on August 29th. You addressed this later but this was after 3 months of silence from the team, and after his 'hold in' began, and formal trade request, which came in July. To my knowledge there are no reports claiming otherwise as Chance had said.

There's additional nuance beyond these details, but the baseline point is the team shares responsibility in the delay of his extension, as you noted. A casual comment at signing doesn't indicate otherwise.

You assume everything reported is factual, you nor anyone else, know this to be true except for Aiyuk's representatives and the team, and to my knowledge, neither has confirmed any of this.

Originally posted by Sask49erFan:

Originally posted by SmokeyJoe:
It's not just whether Kyle made a mistake by jamming this deal through. It's the look at the inner workings of this front office that have been revealed through this situation.

Start with some very basic questions: who was it that Kyle had to leap to get this deal through in the first place? Doesn't Kyle have final say over the roster? Kyle reportedly lost some level of say in personnel matters following this extension, does someone else fill that void in his place? There's many others.

To me, Kyle and John's public statements have been pretty unintentionally revealing throughout this ordeal. Wish someone with access would follow up. Instead we have Grant Cohn who's too dumb to notice a real potential controversy while he's busy creating them, and a lot of company men outside of him (at least in terms of the local group).

If I remember correctly we had a trade agreed to with Pittsburg for a 2nd and an offensive lineman.

Then Shanahan got Aiyuk to agree to the contract extension and ran down the hallway to make sure the trade didn't go through.

If this is correct it's another MASSIVE fail for Shanahan and whoever else makes the personnel decisions.

As for Aiyuk, there has to be a way we can keep him, place him on the exempt list / did not report and NOT have to pay him a cent more.

Do NOT release him. Keep him squirming on social media and watch his career be over.

You remember wrong. The 49ers had a trade in place, first with NE, and Aiyuk said no, then with the Steelers and again Aiyuk said no.

Originally posted by WINiner:
You assume everything reported is factual, you nor anyone else, know this to be true except for Aiyuk's representatives and the team, and to my knowledge, neither has confirmed any of this.

Originally posted by WINiner:
You remember wrong. The 49ers had a trade in place, first with NE, and Aiyuk said no, then with the Steelers and again Aiyuk said no.

Lol. Too funny.

At the very least, he was more direct in his latest video. The cryptic, weird s**t was annoying.

Originally posted by Youngone:

View this post on Instagram

Originally posted by JMC52:
This guy is a clown and I wish nothing but injuries and regret going foward.

Man some 9er fans never learn... some in here were acting the same way when T.O. was about to leave.

And usually when you wish injuries on other players....your own star playe.....ah.....ah...nevermind.

Originally posted by WINiner:

Originally posted by Sask49erFan:

Originally posted by SmokeyJoe:
It's not just whether Kyle made a mistake by jamming this deal through. It's the look at the inner workings of this front office that have been revealed through this situation.

Start with some very basic questions: who was it that Kyle had to leap to get this deal through in the first place? Doesn't Kyle have final say over the roster? Kyle reportedly lost some level of say in personnel matters following this extension, does someone else fill that void in his place? There's many others.

To me, Kyle and John's public statements have been pretty unintentionally revealing throughout this ordeal. Wish someone with access would follow up. Instead we have Grant Cohn who's too dumb to notice a real potential controversy while he's busy creating them, and a lot of company men outside of him (at least in terms of the local group).

If I remember correctly we had a trade agreed to with Pittsburg for a 2nd and an offensive lineman.

Then Shanahan got Aiyuk to agree to the contract extension and ran down the hallway to make sure the trade didn't go through.

If this is correct it's another MASSIVE fail for Shanahan and whoever else makes the personnel decisions.

As for Aiyuk, there has to be a way we can keep him, place him on the exempt list / did not report and NOT have to pay him a cent more.

Do NOT release him. Keep him squirming on social media and watch his career be over.

You remember wrong. The 49ers had a trade in place, first with NE, and Aiyuk said no, then with the Steelers and again Aiyuk said no.

Wrong.

"Did Shanahan stop a trade of Aiyuk to pittsburgh"

Yes, that is true, but it was to stop a trade that was already in the works to send wide receiver Brandon Aiyuk to the Pittsburgh Steelers. [1]

The incredible last-second turn of events occurred on August 29, 2024, right before Aiyuk ended his contract holdout: [1]

The Breakthrough: Aiyuk showed up early at the 49ers' facility and had a meeting with head coach Kyle Shanahan, which made Shanahan realize Aiyuk ultimately wanted to stay in San Francisco.

[1, 2]The Interruption: Shanahan quickly tried to call the front office to halt the trade, but couldn't get through because executives were already on the phone finalizing the trade details with the Steelers.

[1]The Sprint: Shanahan literally ran upstairs to the front office to tell them to put an immediate hold on the trade talks.

[1]The Ultimatum: Shanahan and GM John Lynch then sat down with Aiyuk for two hours, giving him an ultimatum: either take the four-year, $120 million contract extension the team had on the table, or get traded to Pittsburgh by the end of the day's practice. [1, 2, 3]

Aiyuk chose to accept the extension and stay with the 49ers. [1]

And Shanahan confirmed Aiyuk was about to be traded and confirmed the Jay Glazer report.

https://www.49erswebzone.com/articles/183774-shanahan-confirms-glazers-report-brandon/

It was a bad deal for us. BA was not worth the money. On paper maybe he came close but in reality $50M for 25 catches was a ripoff and BA is even saying this himself in so many words

It is one thing to get hurt but another to stop showing up until we have to void your guarantees and then you ghost us

Dude was paid $50M to play get hurt rehab and hit all checkpoints with the team and he couldn't do that and now he's antsy because we didn't release him post June 1

Originally posted by SmokeyJoe:

Originally posted by Chance:
26 mil, if accurate, is a perfectly reasonable starting point. You characterize this as "significantly lower" than his market value. Really? Significantly lower? Now my memory is not great, but this starting offer would have paid him around the top ten WRs at the time, which would have been in line with his market value. 30 mil, which he ended up taking, paid him above his grade as he became the fourth highest paid WR, a tier beyond his level of play.

The language you use continues to display bias as you say the FO "ghosted" Aiyuk from that point until August. Ghosting connotes not returning one's calls. Ignoring them. We don't know how negotiations were tabled at that point. We don't know how Aiyuk may have countered the initial proposal, or whether the team left the door open for his camp to give them a number when they were ready to re-enter. The language you use matters, and for whatever reason, you seem inclined to be hyperbolic when it comes to FO decisions.

To be clear, I don't think the FO looked good with this situation. But I see no evidence they operated in bad-faith, which you seem to be implying. I think they had a number and they didn't want to go much beyond. When they offered 30, and BA strung them along, they should have traded him. The red flags were clearly visible at that point and they ignored them because they had a SB quality team and no number 1 WR.

Mistakes were made, but that's life in the NFL.

26 million wasn't the starting point. It was the final offer they made for three months. The starting point was earlier, and lower. You're free to think 4m is not significantly different than what his market value was but I would disagree. It's a 13%+ discount each year, over multiple years, and that's without knowing specifics of structure including guarantees.

Market value isn't necessarily dictated by how a player ranks among his peers. It's the price he would fetch on the open market, and you can see in the reporting that he had offers as part of a trade package, from multiple teams, at or above that 30m number. That said, he was a 2nd team all pro that season (1 of 5 wide receivers who were either 1st or 2nd team all pros).

For clarity, I don't think the team acted in bad faith in the negotiation. I think they share responsibility in the delayed resolution. Both sides exercised leverage, and we've seen negotiations play out similarly with other players. I expect the team and player to work in their interests… that's normal business.

The problem with the Aiyuk situation is that he was never in the same class as guys like Jefferson and Chase. The "market" says top receivers should get paid X and because agents are mostly ego driven leeches, they have to get their guy more than some other agent got for his guy. I don't think Aiyuk was ever actually worth $26 million a year, or whatever he ended up signing for, but that's what the market seemed to dictate.

I like Brock a lot as a QB, is he worth $53 million a year, probably not. Even when the Aiyuk negotiations were going on I was against paying him. They could have gotten more value from the situation by trading him and extending Jennings, which they probably could have done for $12-$15 million before he had that big season with Aiyuk out. But then he gets greedy and starts thinking that he's worth $24 million a year, or whatever he was asking. So now he's a Viking, and they're paying him what, $8 million?

I liked Jennings but I kind of soured on him last year when JonnyDel did a video about how half of all the interceptions by Brock and Mac last year came while they were targeting Jennings. Now I guess you can argue that with his increased role in the offense with everyone else hurt, that there's a statistical basis for that, more targets equal more opportunities for picks, but JonnyDel's point was that Jennings lacked the speed to get the kind of separation he needed on those crossing routes and so the corners and safeties were able to undercut the throws. So now, we have an almost completely new group of receivers. Hopefully, they'll all stay healthy and prove to be an upgrade over what we've had there recently. Go Niners!

Originally posted by Sask49erFan:
And Shanahan confirmed Aiyuk was about to be traded and confirmed the Jay Glazer report.

https://www.49erswebzone.com/articles/183774-shanahan-confirms-glazers-report-brandon/

This is one part of the whole thing that is the 49ers' fault, ... specifically Kyle's fault. They should have let the trade to Pittsburgh go through.

Or they should have said F it, and traded BA to Cleveland or New England instead, if possible, without BA's input.