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49ers WR Brandon Aiyuk is on Pace for Fewer than 1,000 Yards

Not great.

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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I'm sure this isn't what the 49ers hoped to get from Brandon Aiyuk when they gave him a four-year, $120 million contract with $45 million guaranteed at signing before the season started.

Through six games, Aiyuk has 23 catches on 41 targets for 351 yards and zero touchdowns. Last season, he had 75 catches, 1342 yards and 7 touchdowns. Which means this year, he's on pace for 65 catches, 994 yards and no touchdowns.

Not great.

Not awful, either. But certainly not worth $30 million per season. You'd think he would be the focal point of the offense while Christian McCaffrey is out, but he's not. He's had fewer than 50 yards in five of the 49ers' six games. And he has no touchdowns because Kyle Shanahan almost never calls his number when the 49ers are in the red zone. Shanahan would rather call plays for the fullback.

Aiyuk still gets open and makes catches when the 49ers throw him the ball. But they've never won games by forcing the ball to him repeatedly the way the Vikings force the ball to Justin Jefferson. Aiyuk is at his most effective and efficient when the 49ers limit his targets and the opposing defense doesn't know when he's going to get the ball. If they focus their attention on him, they can shut him down.

It's starting to look like last season was an outlier for Aiyuk and he has regressed to the mean of his abilities. Which means he's still a quality starter for the 49ers. But he's also one of the most overpaid players in the NFL.

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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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