All 49ers

Brandon Aiyuk has Outgrown his Role in the 49ers Offense

Let's compare Aiyuk to other elite wide receivers and how their teams use them.

Grant Cohn

In this story:

Brandon Aiyuk has emerged as one of the top wide receivers in the NFL this season, and yet the 49ers still treat him like he's an afterthought.

They gave him four targets on Thanksgiving. And two weeks ago, they gave him only three. And they won both games, so no one cares about Aiyuk's targets. But the 49ers have thrown him double-digit passes in a game only once this season. That's odd.

Let's compare Aiyuk to other elite wide receivers and how their teams use them.

Three wide receivers currently have at least 45 catches and a passer rating of at least 124 when targeted: Aiyuk, Tyreek Hill and CeeDee Lamb, three of the best wide receivers in football. But Hill has 88 catches, Lamb has 78 and Aiyuk has just 45, and that's because Hill has 120 targets, Lamb has 104 targets and Aiyuk has just 65.

Dolphins head coach Mike McDaniel understands he has a responsibility to his team to get the ball to Hill as much as possible because he's one of the premier gamebreakers in the NFL. Hill has had double-digits targets 8 times this season. Imagine what Aiyuk's numbers would be if he had 120 targets right now, or if he played for the Dolphins.

Aiyuk has earned more targets -- he's a premier gamebreaker, too. He's averaging 19.6 yards per catch. And any time a starting wide receiver has a passer rating above 120 when targeted, he needs more opportunities to catch the ball.

When will the 49ers figure this out?

Published
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.

Home/News