Originally posted by jakedogg:
It's safe to say they got absolutely nothing when they resigned him. Since '17 consider other high priced acquisitions that gave zero contribution. Javan Hargrave, Weston Richburg, Gross Matos. High(er) draft picks Ruben Foster, Dante Pettis, Kinlaw, RB Trey Sermon, Lance, TE Cameron Latu, DE Drake Jackson, and my favorite Jake Moody. Hindsight will always be 20-20. If DT Odighizuwa has a down year there are no money guarantees for '27, just an $11 million cap hit. Hopefully he'll play well enough to pay him the $20 million he'll be owed in '27. It's the guaranteed money that's the kicker. Let the other owners throw it away in pursuit of wins. Any hint of an attitude should be a red flag. Injury frequency too but the market deals with that better than what's in a player's head. There's room for discounted one year-prove it deals, 3-4 of them each year. There's room for 5-7 big contracts(keepers) that are home grown and come through. 4th year players should selectively be given the opportunity to (first contract) test the market with the trade compensation understood beforehand. By selectively I mean a replacement in place. There's a whole lot of exciting turnover every mid-March in the calendar year. Patchwork players while developmental ones learn.
I'm surprised Super Bowl winners don't cut or let go more big name players. They'll be forgiven coming off their success but the rest of the league will be aiming for them and they'll get the toughest of schedules, suggesting a letdown. Seattle has done it. Will Myles Garrett guarantee the Rams a Super Bowl? It will set up important questions down the road-QB for instance and paying others. The 5-7 big contracts the 49ers gave out are getting long on tooth. Should they win everything next year you can expect several of them be voided. Let's hope the scouting department is tops as the jury is still out on their recent drafts.
Weston Richburg definitely gave us more than Aiyuk's latest deal. I also think adding even guys like Foster, Pettis, Kinlaw and lumping them with the likes of Sermon, Latu and Aiyuk on this deal is too much.
I think you can't lump all those guys together because they failed in very different circumstances and for different reasons.
Foster was terrific as a rookie and most thought we had a stud LB again. His stupidity off the field combined with his injury bad luck killed a promising start to his career. Pettis had one of the better rookie seasons for a 49ers WR in some time before he fizzled out but I believe he's still on a roster somewhere so it's not like he wasn't talented, he just didn't have the right mindset to really be a star.
Sermon and Latu were just terrible draft picks.
Aiyuk to me is the worst in the bunch. He showed that he can be a terrific player if he's putting in the work and his mind is right. In hindsight clearly extending him was the wrong move but there have been other troubled players who stayed professional in order to collect their big paycheck and continued to play at a high level.
I still think that had Aiyuk not gotten injured all of this may have never went down. But the fact that it did...he was easily the worst of the bunch to me. HUGE $, terrible payoff. All those other guys you mentioned were either on rookie deals or actually contributed more than we got from Aiyuk under the deals they got and I don't think any of them got as much as BA did.
. I still think BA needs a kick in the ass tho lol