ASU Football: PFF Grades Brandon Aiyuk 's Debut
Brandon Aiyuk's NFL debut proved even the best wide receivers in college football have to adjust to the speed of the NFL game.
Against the New York Jets, Aiyuk only caught two of his three targets for 21 yards. It was a quiet day for Aiyuk, who didn't get much opportunity.
With the San Francisco 49ers up 21-7 at halftime, they moved to a more conservative offense, running the ball at will. And how can you blame them, they ran it for a total of 182 yards on 6.3 yards per attempt.
Aiyuk was simply game scripted out of this one. Not to mention, Jimmy Garoppolo didn't play in the second half.
After missing most of practice the last few weeks because of a hamstring injury, then losing your quarterback in your first NFL start, it's tough to ask a rookie wide receiver to overcome so many adverse situations in their debut.
Pro Football Focus felt the same way when grading Aiyuk's week 2. He was given a 69.2 overall grade, which is out of 100. PFF didn't think Aiyuk was tremendous or overly impressive in his debut, but their grade reflects he wasn't the main culprit for his lack of production, while still making the most of the opportunities he was given.
Both coach Kyle Shanahan and Brandon Aiyuk expressed how it was good to see the rookie finally on the field, but there are definitely areas he can improve on.
"I was happy for Brandon," Shanahan told reporters after the game. "Anytime you're a rookie, and you get to go in your first game, there's always a lot of pressure on you and stuff, especially with the fact he hadn't been out at practice that much and missing those three weeks. He got kind of thrown into the fire this week in practice, and I thought he only did better in the game. He made a couple of plays, broke a couple of tackles, a couple of rookie mistakes too, which we'll harp on, but that's a little expected. It was nice to see the game wasn't too big for him. He caught the ball, I thought he had a good off-schedule play, and I always love watching guys break tackles."
Aiyuk echoed a similar sentiment.
"A couple of rookie mistakes. Mistakes that shouldn't have been made but mistakes I'll definitely have to learn from," Aiyuk said. "I'll have to look at the film and just learn from those next week. But I feel good I got those out."
The opportunity could be there in week 3 for Brandon Aiyuk, but he will be without quarterback Jimmy G with Nick Mullens starting in his place. The 49ers don't have to travel anywhere as they will be playing the New York Giants in the meadowlands once again.
The numbers will tell you the Giants passing defense has been dominant this year, second-fewest passing yards allowed so far. But a lot of that is because the Giants have a bottom third run defense, so teams don't have to throw the ball.
We know the 49ers love to run it to set-up play-action. If the Giants focus too much on trying to stop the 49ers rushing attack, then look for Mullens to at least get a couple of deep shots to Brandon Aiyuk.
