Is there Animosity Between 49ers WR Brandon Aiyuk and Kyle Shanahan?

It will be so interesting to see how this standoff resolves itself.

Grant Cohn | Jun 30, 2024

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

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San Francisco 49ers

The messy contract negotiations between Brandon Aiyuk and the 49ers may be just business. Aiyuk wants $30 million per season and the 49ers are offering $26 million per season and they're taking their time to compromise.

Or these negotiations may be personal.

Remember, Brandon Aiyuk has taken a backseat on the 49ers for years. Kyle Shanahan put him in the doghouse for the first half of 2021 and insinuated that Aiyuk was unprofessional. Since then, their relationship has seemed frosty at best. Now Aiyuk has an opportunity to force Shanahan to acknowledge how important Aiyuk is to the offense. And Shanahan has an opportunity to dig in and show Aiyuk that he's replaceable.

Two years ago when Deebo Samuel requested a trade, reporters asked Shanahan why he's confident the team could work out an extension with the disgruntled wide receiver. "We have a great relationship with Deebo," Shanahan said. "I haven’t seen him a lot since the season ended. I think it’s a little bit easier when you’re dealing with people without screens and phones in front of you."

Shanahan was able to work things out with Samuel because those two are friends. They genuinely like each other.

Shanahan and Aiyuk are not friends. They're colleagues. And it seems that Aiyuk resents the fact that Shanahan doesn't think higher of him. It was reported that the 49ers tried to trade for Justin Jefferson this offseason, which shows that Shanahan thinks Aiyuk is a tier below the top wide receivers in the NFL.

It will be so interesting to see how this standoff resolves itself.

Published Jun 9, 2024|Modified Jun 30, 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.