Tag: brandon aiyuk trade

Fact check: Brandon Aiyuk is NOT going to Pittsburgh

A quick fact check: Brandon Aiyuk is staying with the 49ers.

We did an independent fact check of the above tweet. Brandon Aiyuk is in fact, NOT going to Pittsburgh in a trade between the Steelers and the San Francisco 49ers.

Aiyuk instead agreed to a four-year deal worth up to $120 million to stay in San Francisco. The 49ers, and their All-Pro wide receiver aren’t scheduled to go to Pittsburgh any time soon. The Steelers and 49ers aren’t scheduled to play again until 2027. That game will take place at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara.

With the Photoshop and everything. Tough.

Ah, well. Nevertheless.

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Broncos held up 49ers trading Brandon Aiyuk to Steelers per the Athletic

It turns out the Broncos are the reason the 49ers didn’t trade Brandon Aiyuk to Pittsburgh.

The Denver Broncos might be the reason wide receiver Brandon Aiyuk is still with the San Francisco 49ers.

A trade was in place between the 49ers and Steelers to send Aiyuk to Pittsburgh. That trade ultimately never materialized, and the Athletic’s Dianna Russini reported the Broncos are the reason why.

Russini on Thursday reported the 49ers were going to acquire a third-round pick from the Steelers, and then flip a third-round selection to the Denver Broncos in exchange for wide receiver Courtland Sutton. Denver didn’t take the deal.

This makes the 49ers-Steelers trade talks a lot more clear.

San Francisco was on the hunt for an asset to help them in the 2024 season. A quick look at the Steelers roster showed there weren’t many realistic options in that realm, especially if the 49ers wanted a wide receiver.

The 49ers instead tried to get creative since Pittsburgh was one of the only teams Aiyuk would’ve agreed to sign with long-term. That was a prerequisite for any trade.

Alas, Denver wouldn’t move off Sutton for a late Day 2 pick. That effectively squashed any hope of a trade between the 49ers and Steelers, opening the door for the 49ers to up their offer and ink Aiyuk to a four-year extension that will keep him under contract through the 2028 season.

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How much money will Brandon Aiyuk lose during hold-in?

Here’s how expensive Brandon Aiyuk’s hold-in could get.

Brandon Aiyuk’s hold-in has now bled through training camp and into regular-season preparations.

The San Francisco 49ers practiced Wednesday and Thursday without their All-Pro wide receiver despite expectations from the team that he’d practice without a long-term extension secured.

A prolonged negotiation may have been frustrating for both sides, but it’s going to start getting extremely expensive for Aiyuk.

According to Spotrac, Aiyuk will be subject to a $40,000 fine for each unexcused absence he has from practice. General manager John Lynch told reporters in a press conference Wednesday that team doctors had cleared Aiyuk from the back injury that pushed him out of training camp sessions.

That would seem to indicate any further absence won’t be excused. If that’s the case, he’s up to $80,000 in fines for Wednesday and Thursday.

Things get even more expensive if his hold-in lasts into the regular season. He’s due to forfeit 1/18th of his $14.12 million salary for every game he misses. That equates to $784,666.67 per game.

Doing some quick math, if Aiyuk misses all three practices leading up to Week 1, and then misses Week 1, he will be out $904,666.67 for the week. That number repeats every week the hold-in lasts.

More quick math: that would be more than $15.3 million in fines for Aiyuk if he sits out the entire year. He’d also not accrue a full season and he’d enter next offseason in the same place contractually.

This is where the 49ers believe their leverage lies, so they’ll likely do everything they can to impose the maximum fines to try and get Aiyuk back onto the field.

It’ll be financially expensive for Aiyuk to miss practices and games. It might at the same time cost the 49ers some wins.

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Are the Commanders a threat to swoop in and trade for 49ers All-Pro WR?

Are the Commanders suddenly a threat to swoop in and trade for Brandon Aiyuk?

What happened to the Washington Commanders?

The San Francisco 49ers gave wide receiver Brandon Aiyuk permission to talk to the Commanders and three other teams at the outset of their trade discussions. The 49ers have worked out deals with three of those teams – the Cleveland Browns, New England Patriots and Pittsburgh Steelers.

It never seemed like the Commanders were in the mix despite Aiyuk’s apparent desire to play there.

The San Francisco Chronicle’s Mike Silver and NFL Media’s Peter Schrager have both recently floated the Commanders idea again after Washington acquired an additional third-round pick in a trade that sent wide receiver Jahan Dotson to the Eagles.

There are plenty of dots to connect between the teams. Commanders general manager Adam Peters was in the 49ers’ front office for the entire Kyle Shanahan-John Lynch tenure until this offseason. Commanders quarterback Jayden Daniels also played at Arizona State with Aiyuk. Tack on a new third-round pick to play with and things get interesting.

The problem here is the Commanders have never appeared to have any interest in pursuing Aiyuk. There hasn’t been any reporting about Washington offering Aiyuk a contract, which helps explain why they’re the only team of the initial four to not work out a trade with the 49ers.

If they weren’t willing to have those talks in early August, it’s hard to imagine they’re going to suddenly pick up the phone and try to work out a trade less than two weeks before the regular season begins.

Alas, the rumor mill is going to churn until there’s a resolution to the Aiyuk contract saga. Things are still at the same tipping point they’ve been at for awhile. The Steelers are hoping to trade for Aiyuk and have a deal in place with the 49ers. Meanwhile, San Francisco and their All-Pro wide receiver are one hurdle away from coming to an agreement on a deal.

While the Commanders make sense as a trade partner logically, it appears  Aiyuk will suit up for either the Steelers or 49ers (with a lean toward the latter) this season.

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Is the Brandon Aiyuk contract saga ending or not?

The Brandon Aiyuk reports are exhausting. Let us know when it’s over.

Readers will be shocked to hear that new information surfaced Monday about Brandon Aiyuk’s ongoing contract negotiations.

NFL Media’s Mike Garafolo reported once again that the 49ers and Aiyuk are close on a contract. Sports Illustrated’s Albert Breer said the 49ers and Pittsburgh Steelers offers for Aiyuk are in the same ballpark.

Unfortunately none of this really matters or gets us any closer to a resolution.

The same posturing and circling have been going on for multiple weeks now. As soon as the 49ers stopped trade talks with the Steelers it became clear where this was all heading. They’d either ink Aiyuk to a deal or send him to Pittsburgh for some trade package they aren’t happy with.

If the 49ers weren’t close on a contract they likely would have traded Aiyuk already. They certainly wouldn’t have upped their offer.

Now we’ve lost track of what ball is in whose court. Instead we’re left to watch these standoff between Aiyuk and the 49ers that apparently is down to some kind of minor detail per Garafolo.

Perhaps this is on Aiyuk and his agent at this point. Maybe they’re being sticklers over something small and dragging this out much longer than it needs to go.

However, it’s hard not to look at the 49ers and whatever happened in the period of time between when they decided to stop negotiating and when Aiyuk made his trade request a week before reporting to training camp.

These kind of things should have been getting hammered out a long time ago where a little bit of a standoff was acceptable. As the negotiations enter the third week of August, the standoff is no longer okay. Whatever the minor detail is needs to get ironed out, even if it means needing to make a couple of corresponding adjustments in future years because of Aiyuk’s contract structure.

At this point it no longer feels like the two sides are negotiating. It feels like they both know exactly what it’s going to take to get the deal done and neither side feels much urgency to push whatever button needs to be pushed to finalize it.

There are sure to be more reports as the Aiyuk drama envelops the rest of the NFL. It appears the only one that really matters at this point will be the one that says he’s either been signed or traded. Everything else is just continuing to spin the same wheels that have been spinning for the last two weeks.

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NFL executives now believe Brandon Aiyuk will stay with 49ers

NFL executives must be reading the same tea leaves we are on the Brandon Aiyuk situation.

The good news is there’s nothing new on the Brandon Aiyuk contract saga. The bad news is there’s nothing new on the Brandon Aiyuk contract saga.

As things drag deeper into the middle of August and the team starts feeling the pressure to find a resolution with their All-Pro wide receiver before the season starts, the more it feels like we’re meandering (slowly) toward a conclusion where Aiyuk gets a massive extension to stay with the 49ers long-term.

There are tea leaves to read with things general manager John Lynch has said, Aiyuk’s actions, and what some of Aiyuk’s teammates have said that lead us to that conclusion. Now that thinking is permeating other NFL front offices.

ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler provided an update Saturday where he didn’t have any news on Aiyuk’s contract specifically, but he did say competing executives now believe Aiyuk will be staying with the 49ers.

Perhaps those executives are with the Steelers, who have been trying to work out a trade with San Francisco, and they’ve gotten the idea he’s not available anymore. They might just be execs from other clubs who are looking at the same tea leaves we are and coming to similar conclusions. After all, it never really made sense for the 49ers to trade Aiyuk in August for something that would’ve fallen well below market value while likely harming their chances to win a Super Bowl in 2024.

Ultimately the thoughts of other executives aren’t going to move the 49ers and Aiyuk closer to a resolution. It’s a better sign than not, however, that opposing executives are leaning toward Aiyuk staying even after all the trade talks in the early portion of August.

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49ers WR Deebo Samuel: I think Brandon Aiyuk is going to be a part of this team

Deebo Samuel won’t even entertain question about 49ers chances without Brandon Aiyuk.

There still isn’t a resolution to the Brandon Aiyuk contract negotiations with the San Francisco 49ers.

Prolonged contract talks and trade rumors have led us to ponder what this year’s 49ers club would look like without the All-Pro wide receiver lining up across from Deebo Samuel. Given the injury situation, things look potentially grim in the world where Aiyuk isn’t suiting up in red and gold this season.

While that speculation is happening, Samuel told Kay Adams he isn’t worried about what the team would look like without Aiyuk.

Adams, who hosts the show ‘Up and Adams’ on FanDuel TV interviewed Samuel at the team’s facility on Friday and asked him if they could win the Super Bowl without Aiyuk.

“I think BA’s gonna be a part of this team,” Samuel said. “So we don’t have to worry about that.”

For 49ers fans looking for crumbs of optimism about Aiyuk staying with the 49ers, this is the third thing to come out Friday that indicates the trade possibility is further away than ever.

Samuel’s optimism is likely founded in discussions about the situation with Aiyuk, who was out at practice all week. Aiyuk also ran sprints during Friday’s practice after general manager John Lynch went on KNBR radio in the Bay Area and talked about the urgency the team is feeling to get him signed.

Of course, Samuel isn’t involved in the negotiations. However, it’s notable that he didn’t dance around the question or give a non-answer. He was as straightforward as possible that he thought Aiyuk would be with the 49ers this season.

If he is, they have a real chance to overcome the dreaded Super Bowl hangover to make a rare Super Bowl run a year after losing it. If he isn’t, their chances dwindle significantly. The latter is scary, but apparently irrelevant.

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49ers WR Brandon Aiyuk gets workout in during practice

BRANDON AIYUK WAS DOING SPRINTS DURING THE 49ERS PRACTICE ON FRIDAY.

Friday’s practice for the San Francisco 49ers offered an interesting wrinkle in the ongoing Brandon Aiyuk contract saga.

Not only did Aiyuk attend practice again – the third time he’d done so in as many days – but Friday’s attendance came with a workout on one of the team’s side fields at the SAP Performance Center.

Multiple reporters on site for practice reported after the session that Aiyuk was running sprints in addition to observing practice.

Of all the reporting that’s gone on around Aiyuk’s contract talks, this may be the clearest indication yet that something is close between Aiyuk and the 49ers. Surely Aiyuk has been working out throughout the offseason. Doing so at the team facility in front of reporters during practice is much different than doing so in private.

This also comes on the heels of remarks by 49ers general manager John Lynch that appeared to indicate some optimism about Aiyuk staying in San Francisco long-term.

Things will remain in question until a deal is signed and Aiyuk is in pads practicing. Perhaps he’s busy Friday and that was his only opportunity to get a workout in, and there’s not any kind of movement on a contract.

Alas, we’re left to try and make sense of puzzle pieces that may or may not fit together. From our view, a player negotiating a contract with a team running sprints at the team facility during the team’s practice is an indication that the contract is close. And we may soon see Aiyuk actually participating with the 49ers instead of just observing.

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John Lynch doesn’t sound like GM getting ready to trade a star wide receiver

It’s hard not to be optimistic that a Brandon Aiyuk contract is getting done with the 49ers after hearing John Lynch on KNBR.

The San Francisco 49ers still don’t have a deal in place on a long-term contract with wide receiver Brandon Aiyuk.

It’s not new that the 49ers have taken their time getting a high-priced extension done with a star player. Just last offseason their negotiations with reigning Defensive Player of the Year Nick Bosa lasted until practice began for the first week of the regular season.

While the Aiyuk deal has come with its share of twists and turns, including rampant trade speculation and multiple deals in place with other teams, recent comments from general manager John Lynch don’t appear to be coming from a GM preparing to trade an All-Pro less than a month away from the regular season opener.

Lynch appeared with ‘Murph and Marcus’ on KNBR in San Francisco and talked about how the team feels the pressure to get something done with Aiyuk as the clock ticks down toward the start of the regular season.

“I’m not going to characterize any chances or anything,” Lynch said. “I can tell you this, it’s been a long, arduous, hard process. A hard journey. We started this early and for whatever reason haven’t been able to get it across the finish line. That’s been frustrating, but the communication still has been really good both with Brandon and his agent, and we’re trying to figure out solutions. You know, I’m always hopeful. I’m an optimistic person by nature, and I’m always hopeful that we’ll get there and get there soon. I can tell you we feel the urgency to have him, the season’s approaching.”

Urgency, or lack thereof, has defined the seemingly interminable Aiyuk saga. The 49ers weren’t in a hurry to negotiate. They apparently aren’t in a hurry to trade him. Now they’re left trying to ram through a negotiation in the 11th hour.

That the club feels that urgency is notable. If they were simply feeling pressure to get anything done, they could pull the trigger on a trade with the Steelers. They may ‘lose the deal,’ but the urgency they’re feeling comes from a desire to get a contract done with Aiyuk.

Lynch elaborated further on Aiyuk’s readiness and the team wanting to keep him in the Bay Area.

“The good news is Brandon is a really, really hard worker,” Lynch said. “He’s taking great care of himself this offseason. He’s in fantastic shape, but there’s things you have to do on a football field and getting yourself in there with our team. So, we’re working hard, and hopefully there’s a resolution soon. That’s all I can share with everyone. I understand the angst of everyone. I understand there’s been all kinds of stories and talk, that’s what people do these days. I don’t like that part of it, but we love BA as a player, I think you see it every time he goes out there representing the Niners. He’s a guy we traded up for in the first round back in the (2020) draft. I remember doing it from my guest house during the COVID times, and we’re fortunate to have added him to our squad. And we’d really like to keep him around.”

Those aren’t the words of a GM preparing to punt his 26-year-old All-Pro to Pittsburgh. It’s been clear throughout the offseason the 49ers want to keep Aiyuk. Based on Aiyuk’s actions and continued negotiations with the 49ers, it’s clear staying in San Francisco is his desired outcome as well.

Lynch can’t come out and say what’s actually going on in negotiations. Reading between the lines of his hit with KNBR provides real optimism that things are heading the right direction with just over three weeks to go until the regular season opener.

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49ers’ Aiyuk has option to remain in the Bay or move to Pittsburgh

In a deal that sources say is now green-lit, the veteran player has the choice to move to Pittsburgh or stay in San Francisco where he looks to get an extension from the 49ers, a team eager to keep their star player on the roster.

There has been a lot of speculation on whether the San Francisco 49ers and Pittsburgh Steelers will reach a trade deal involving wide receiver Brandon Aiyuk, a 49ers’ 2020 first-round draft pick who has since logged 3,931 receiving yards and 269 receptions and was a critical player in the narrow overtime loss to the Chiefs Super Bowl LVIII.

In a deal that sources say is now green-lit, the veteran player has the choice to move to Pittsburgh or stay in San Francisco where he looks to get an extension from the 49ers, a team eager to keep their star player on the roster.

Ian Rapoport shared this update today on Twitter

It is still unclear where Aiyuk will be playing in the future, but the experienced wide receiver has the choice between two teams eager to have him on the roster and out on the field at this juncture in his NFL career.