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Bleacher Report: 49ers WR Brandon Aiyuk has NFL's 7th-Worst Contract

The 49ers were so close to trading Brandon Aiyuk last year.

Grant Cohn

Oct 6, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Brandon Aiyuk (11) after the game against the Arizona Cardinals at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kelley L Cox-Imagn Images
Oct 6, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Brandon Aiyuk (11) after the game against the Arizona Cardinals at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kelley L Cox-Imagn Images / Kelley L Cox-Imagn Images
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The 49ers were so close to trading Brandon Aiyuk last year.

At the last minute, Brandon Aiyuk agreed to the 49ers offer, and Kyle Shanahan literally ran into the front office to stop John Lynch from trading Aiyuk to the Pittsburgh Steelers. Which means Lynch almost made one of the best trades in 49ers franchise history.

Instead, the 49ers gave Aiyuk a four-year, $120 million contract extension, he struggled for 7 games and then tore his ACL, MCL and meniscus. Now, he has the seventh-worst contract in the NFL according to Bleacher Report's Kristopher Knox.

"Missed time aside, the deal wasn't great for San Francisco," writes Knox. "The 49ers were pressured into offering it by Aiyuk's offseason holdout and trade request, but there's no getting around the fact that the 49ers overpaid.

"Aiyuk had flashed high-end potential in his first four seasons. He topped 1,000 receiving yards in 2022 and had 1,342 receiving yards in 2023. However, he had yet to establish himself as a top-tier receiver or a perennial Pro Bowler.

"Desperate to hang onto its playoff-caliber core, San Francisco gave AIyuk a massive four-year deal that still has him as the league's eighth-highest-paid receiver in terms of annual salary.

"With all due respect to Auyuk, he's not the NFL's eighth-best wideout. He showed that by failing to live up to his contract, when healthy, this past season. Aiyuk had just 374 yards and no touchdowns in seven games.

"Making this deal even worse is the fact that the 49ers don't have a clean out until 2027, when they can eat $21.2 million in dead money to save $20.2 million in cap space."

Whether or not the 49ers have a clean out, I have a feeling the 49ers will find a way to move Aiyuk next year. Because it seems like their relationship with him is completely broken and there's nothing they can do to fix it. Plus his contract is horrendous. They'll do whatever it takes to move it.

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Grant Cohn
GRANT COHN

Grant Cohn has covered the San Francisco 49ers daily since 2011. He spent the first nine years of his career with the Santa Rosa Press Democrat where he wrote the Inside the 49ers blog and covered famous coaches and athletes such as Jim Harbaugh, Colin Kaepernick and Patrick Willis. In 2012, Inside the 49ers won Sports Blog of the Year from the Peninsula Press Club. In 2020, Cohn joined FanNation and began writing All49ers. In addition, he created a YouTube channel which has become the go-to place on YouTube to consume 49ers content. Cohn's channel typically generates roughly 3.5 million viewers per month, while the 49ers' official YouTube channel generates roughly 1.5 million viewers per month. Cohn live streams almost every day and posts videos hourly during the football season. Cohn is committed to asking the questions that 49ers fans want answered, and providing the most honest and interactive coverage in the country. His loyalty is to the reader and the viewer, not the team or any player or coach. Cohn is a new-age multimedia journalist with an old-school mentality, because his father is Lowell Cohn, the legendary sports columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle from 1979 to 1993. The two have a live podcast every Tuesday. Grant Cohn grew up in Oakland and studied English Literature at UCLA from 2006 to 2010. He currently lives in Oakland with his wife.

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