49ers WR Brandon Aiyuk Doesn't Watch Friday's Practice

I really hope Brandon Aiyuk Watch 2024 ends soon. It's exhausting.

Grant Cohn | Aug 2, 2024

Feb 5, 2024; Las Vegas, NV, USA; San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Brandon Aiyuk (11) talks to the media during Super Bowl LVIII Opening Night at Allegiant Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Lucas Peltier-USA TODAY Sports / Lucas Peltier-USA TODAY Sports

In this story:

San Francisco 49ers

Brandon Aiyuk Watch 2024 took a shocking turn on Friday.

Aiyuk was nowhere to be seen during practice. As we know, he's holding in because he wants a contract extension, so he hasn't practiced all offseason. But he usually shows up to practice and watches from the sideline while wearing an all-black tracksuit with no 49ers logos on it.

On Wednesday, Aiyuk came out to practice, walked to the middle of the field and shook hands with John Lynch and embraced Kyle Shanahan. This was big news. It seemed like his contract negotiation was coming to a head. Either he was on the verge of signing his extension and was thanking Lynch and Shanahan, or he was on the verge of getting traded and washing saying goodbye to Lynch and Shanahan.

But nothing has happened. No extension. No trade. So why did Aiyuk make such a spectacle of himself on Wednesday? One day it seems like he loves the 49ers and wants to play for them. The next day it seems like he hates the 49ers and never wants to play for them again.

It's also possible that Aiyuk simply wants attention. He recently went on The Pivot Podcast and said that he enjoys being in the spotlight for the first time in his career. Maybe every few days he feels he needs to do something or post something that makes people talk about him and write about him.

I really hope Brandon Aiyuk Watch 2024 ends soon. It's exhausting.

Published Aug 2, 2024

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.