The San Francisco 49ers’ offseason program has begun, and they’re less than a month away from their first OTAs practice. And Brandon Aiyuk is still on the team.
That’s a surprise. Back in January, general manager John Lynch left no doubt about the disgruntled wideout’s future in San Francisco — “It’s safe to say that he has played his last snap with the Niners,” he said — and that a transaction to that effect would be made “in due time.”
The timeline for that transaction, however, has been murky.
Asked in February when the team would make an Aiyuk-related move, Lynch said it wouldn’t come before the new league year began March 11.
Aiyuk’s status remained unchanged by the NFL owners’ meetings on March 30, when Lynch and Kyle Shanahan said the 49ers were hoping another team would trade for the receiver.
“I don’t have a date,” Shanahan said when asked when the 49ers might end up releasing Aiyuk. “We’re in no rush to do that.”
Four days before the draft, Lynch said he’d had “some discussions” with other teams about a trade but conceded it was unlikely they’d deal Aiyuk over draft weekend. He seemed to indicate that if a trade didn’t happen, the team might finally release him.
“The draft is another opportunity because a lot of things happen on draft week,” Lynch said April 20. “So I think we’ll see it through here. We’ll focus on our draft. If something happens there, great. If not, we’ll reevaluate it.”
As expected, Aiyuk wasn’t dealt, and Saturday, Lynch was back to saying they wouldn’t part ways with Aiyuk “anytime soon” unless it was via a trade.
“We’re available. Give us a call,” he said, holding up his phone. “And like I said earlier, I think it’s the prudent thing to do. He’s an extremely talented player. He’s been an extremely effective player in our league. The situation didn’t work itself out here. That’s not to say that it can’t be rekindled somewhere else. And we’d be happy to do something with anyone if the opportunity presented itself.”
Why and how the Aiyuk-49ers relationship soured so dramatically has never been clear. Aiyuk hasn’t spoken to the media in more than a year; he has long preferred to send cryptic messages on social media, such as the one he posted in December of him speeding past Levi’s Stadium.
In league circles, there’s a sense that the 49ers are in no rush to do him any favors after an anguishing contract dispute in 2024 and his abandonment of the team a year later, which led to his salary guarantees being voided.
The Washington Commanders appear the likeliest landing spot for Aiyuk if and when the 49ers sever ties with him. Commanders GM Adam Peters was the 49ers’ vice president of player personnel when they drafted Aiyuk, and Aiyuk is especially close to quarterback Jayden Daniels, his former Arizona State teammate.
Multiple people with knowledge of the Commanders’ thinking said the team believes Aiyuk could be a boost to the roster, but that Washington can’t rely on that given the circumstances. Should Aiyuk become available, Washington would likely consider a short-term, highly incentivized contract.
If Aiyuk performs anything like the player in his prime, he’d be a significant boost to the Commanders’ receiving corps, which currently lacks a proven playmaker opposite Terry McLaurin. But if the experiment were to fall through, Washington wouldn’t lose much by parting ways.
And the Commanders, those people said, appear steadfast in their unwillingness to give up draft assets to acquire Aiyuk.
Brandon Aiyuk (right) and Jayden Daniels played together for the Sun Devils in 2019. (Rob Schumacher / The Republic / USA Today Network via Imagn Images)
The Aiyuk-49ers relationship was always a bit strained.
A first-round pick in 2020, he got off to a fast start as a rookie, leading the team that season with 60 catches, 748 receiving yards and five touchdowns. When the 2021 season began, however, it seemed like Aiyuk was in Shanahan’s doghouse. He didn’t start the season opener in Detroit, was outsnapped in the game by journeyman Trent Sherfield and caught only one pass for 6 yards over the first two weeks.
Shanahan insisted he wasn’t punishing the player. But he noted that the COVID-19 pandemic a year earlier made that offseason so disjointed that Aiyuk didn’t get the hard-knocks indoctrination 49ers rookie receivers normally get.
“And then we had so many people get hurt, and he had to play a ton, but that’s all he knew with the NFL,” Shanahan said. “So his experience is, ‘Man, I just kind of showed up, and I started all year, and people say I’m going to be one of the best guys next year.’”
Still, Aiyuk rallied, his starting role returned, and he finished 2021 with 826 receiving yards. That total rose again, to 1,015 yards, in 2022, and the 2023 season was his best to date.
He finished with 1,342 yards while averaging 17.9 yards per catch. He also came up with the biggest catch of the Shanahan era in San Francisco, a diving grab of a deep pass that ricocheted off a Lions defender in the NFC Championship Game. The grab helped propel the 49ers to a second-half comeback and a trip to the Super Bowl.
The Super Bowl, however, didn’t go well for Aiyuk or the 49ers. They lost in overtime to the Kansas City Chiefs, with Aiyuk held to three catches for 49 yards on six targets.
Afterward, he expressed frustration with his usage and then, on locker-room cleanout day, was moved to tears when asked about the season and his future with the 49ers. Aiyuk was heading into the fifth and final year of his contract at the time, a contract negotiation was in the offing, and he sent a message on Instagram: “Don’t forget what got you there.”
That foreshadowed a long “hold-in” during the 2024 training camp, one in which his antics on the sideline became a sideshow to the team’s practices. The contract negotiations dragged on to the point he asked for a trade, but only to specific locations — the Pittsburgh Steelers because he wanted to play for Mike Tomlin and the Commanders because of his connection with Daniels.
The 49ers were on the verge of trading him in August 2024 but ultimately decided just before the regular season to bring him back on a four-year, $120 million contract. He’d missed all of the offseason and training camp practices and got off to a slow start. Then he suffered a multi-ligament knee injury in Week 7 that wiped out the rest of the season and promised to eat into the start of the 2025 season.
Aiyuk seemed to be on the right track as far as his rehabilitation, with Shanahan saying in October the team was weeks away from opening the receiver’s practice window. But around that time, Aiyuk stopped showing up at the facility, then stopped returning phone calls from the team, including from Shanahan.
“It’s something I’ve never seen in 22 years of coaching,” Shanahan later said.
It was the ultimate fade pattern. On Dec. 13, the 49ers put Aiyuk on the rarely used reserve/left squad list.
How much longer can the 49ers hold Aiyuk in limbo? There’s nothing in his contract that forces the issue anytime soon. He was due $1.2 million in base salary and a $24.9 million option bonus (which originally became guaranteed in April 2025) in 2026, but the 49ers voided the guarantees in July. He remains on the reserve/left squad list — where players are not paid.
Practically, the 49ers’ first OTAs practice on May 27 might be an unofficial marker. Aiyuk is well-versed at making a spectacle of himself even if he isn’t practicing. He did that during his 2024 hold-in. And even though he wasn’t ready to officially practice during his ACL rehabilitation last year, he would still hang out with the wide receivers at the start of practice and run what might be called “shadow” routes while the group was going through its warmup and individual drills.
Maybe Aiyuk’s most effective move is something he failed to do last season — show up for work.
