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Brandon Aiyuk Has Become the 49ers' No. 1 Wide Receiver

Aiyuk is having an elite season.

Grant Cohn

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Brandon Aiyuk famously referred to himself as the fourth option in a run-first offense this offseason. He's not the fourth option anymore.

This season, Aiyuk firmly has established himself as the 49ers' go-to guy in the passing game and their No. 1 wide receiver ahead of Deebo Samuel, who used to be their No. 1 wide receiver. Now, he's the fourth option in a run-first offense.

Aiyuk is having an elite season. He has gained more than 100 yards four times, he's averaging a whopping 92.3 receiving yards per game and is on pace for nearly 1,500 receiving yards this season. As opposed to Samuel, who has gained more than 100 receiving yards just once and is averaging a mere 49.4 receiving yards per game despite earning nearly $24 million per season. Which means Aiyuk must be worth more than that. And he'll be eligible for a contract extension starting this offseason. He's becoming extremely expensive.

Aiyuk is one of the best route runners in the NFL, as opposed to Samuel, who can't seem to separate from NFL cornerbacks anymore. He mostly catches screen passes and runs end arounds. Not Aiyuk. He runs the full route tree and makes even the best NFL cornerbacks look silly. Plus he's tough, not afraid to go over the middle. And he's a great blocker. And he's a deep threat. He probably would catch even more deep passes if he played on a team that threw deep more often.

But he's still dangerous on the 49ers. And until teams figure out a way to stop him, the 49ers offense will continue to roll.

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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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