What Really Transpired in the Brandon Aiyuk–49ers Negotiations

San Francisco’s No. 1 receiver wanted to stay all along, and gives the team something it wouldn’t have had without him. Plus much more as we get ready for Week 1 of the NFL’s 2024 regular season.

Aiyuk signed a four-year, $120 million contract after prolonged negotiations with the 49ers. / Corey Perrine/Florida Times-Unio / USA TODAY NETWORK

If every good deal makes each side a little unhappy, then mission accomplished for the San Francisco 49ers after they (finally) came to terms with star wide receiver Brandon Aiyuk.

San Francisco, in the end, got no hometown discount. In fact, what Aiyuk would’ve received from the Pittsburgh Steelers was actually less (until you consider tax implications) than the four-year, $120 million extension he signed Thursday. Conversely, while Aiyuk’s hold-in moved the 49ers off the spot they occupied in the spring, it didn’t move the needle much the past few weeks, and the final numbers wound up short of where the Minnesota Vikings’ Justin Jefferson and Dallas Cowboys’ CeeDee Lamb landed financially this summer.

But here’s the silver lining: Aiyuk wanted to remain in San Francisco all along, is a true No. 1 receiver and gives the 49ers something they wouldn’t have without him—a long-term skill-position player they can pair with Brock Purdy.

And therein is where Aiyuk was truly a unique piece in San Francisco’s arsenal of talent. As good as the Niners are at the skill spots, George Kittle is in his thirties, and Christian McCaffrey and Deebo Samuel have a lot of mileage on their legs. To take it a step further, Trent Williams is deep into his thirties, and Fred Warner’s going into his seventh season. So if you’re looking for long-range, blue-chip building blocks, it’s Purdy, Aiyuk and Nick Bosa.

That said, this thing did get pretty ugly over the past month or so. On Aug. 12, the Niners put two final offers on the table for Aiyuk and his camp. What Aiyuk took wasn’t far off from one of them. The proposals materialized after San Francisco gave the star receiver a chance to seek a financial agreement with another team to help facilitate a trade, and the Niners started listening.

Here’s a bit of what transpired …

• San Francisco was at $26 million per year in May, but didn’t move off that spot before camp kicked off in July. Then, when camp commenced, and Aiyuk decided to hold-in, the sides had to start over. On Aug. 12, the Niners made the two proposals—one for $120 million over four years, and another for $87 million over three years. Aiyuk rejected both, and they came off the table. Then, last week, when the sides reopened talks, the Niners’ offers went back on the table, and Aiyuk took the four-year, $120 million deal.

• Had the New England Patriots done a deal with the Niners for Aiyuk, and they were trying, the package was expected to be for a 2025 second-round pick, a ’26 fourth-rounder, and a player—the Niners asked for Kendrick Bourne, who played for San Francisco from 2017–20 and is still making his way back from a torn ACL. New England put two contract proposals in front of Aiyuk. One averaged $30 million over three years, and the other exceeded $32 million per year over four years.

• The Cleveland Browns were also in the mix. The Niners asked for second- and fifth-rounders and Amari Cooper for Aiyuk. That, logistically, would’ve been tricky to pull off for Cleveland—the Browns had already given Cooper an $18.79 million signing bonus as part of his restructure/raise. That said, I did hear Cleveland would’ve been willing to do a three-year deal rather than a four-year extension with Aiyuk at a really good number.

• The Steelers came closest to acquiring Aiyuk. They refused to give up a current player, but were willing to part with second- and third-round picks. The interesting thing is the money wasn’t as good with the Steelers, who didn’t want to go past what T.J. Watt makes ($28 million APY) and as such offered Aiyuk $27.7 million APY. The Niners made calls to about a dozen teams to see if they could flip the third-rounder somewhere else to land a veteran receiver to replace Aiyuk in the lineup.

And that underscores a key element—Kyle Shanahan and John Lynch were never going to undermine the 2024 49ers while trying to find a resolution. Aiyuk’s final number represents a healthy bump over where negotiations were in the spring, but not in the same neighborhood as the Jefferson and Lamb deals.

An even bigger key, as I see it, was that, again, Aiyuk never wanted to leave San Francisco. He knows how hard it is to win a Super Bowl. He’s been to the NFC title game three times in four years. The 49ers’ offers were competitive, despite tax-heavy California. He’s also a West Coast kid who grew up in the state, and went to college in Arizona. In the end, the only reason he considered Pittsburgh, and not Cleveland or New England, was because of a rapport he built with Steelers coach Mike Tomlin over Zoom calls before the 2020 draft.

But last Thursday, when he was faced with another chance to force his way out, one of a few he had over the past few weeks, and San Francisco’s offer went back on the table? Aiyuk’s actions showed the truth, which is, deep down, he never wanted to go, particularly with a deal in front of him that had no fluff, and set him up to earn every penny he’s owed.

Now, it’ll be up to everyone to get past a situation that got testy over the past month.

All of them, of course, have bigger fish to fry.

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The Brazil game will be interesting. Philadelphia Eagles receiver A.J. Brown explained why over the weekend when the Philly media asked him about going to São Paulo.

“I’m just trying to go down there to win a football game and come back home,” Brown said. “After hearing all of this stuff, you know, I’m probably just going to stay in my room.”

Which is exactly what players are being told to do.

NFL Security met with both teams, and the Eagles and Green Bay Packers players are being advised strongly—if not flat-out told—to do what Brown said he’d do, and stay at their hotels, outside of the trips they’ll make to Arena Corinthians, where the game is Friday. The teams also had a list of do’s and don’ts spelled out for them when they are outside the hotels. One was to not  walk outside with their phones out of their pockets. Another was to not respond to any weird messages on their phones.

Philly, to a degree, has the issue handled in an organic way. For convenience sake, and because the commute from the airport and stadium to and from downtown can take more than an hour, they decided to stay at the airport, which is near Arena Corinthians. So they’re out of the way of all of the tourist stuff, giving those in their traveling party less motivation to leave their hotel—there will be kiosks set up in the hotel to give Eagles folks a local feel, and a chance to get souvenirs to bring home. The Packers, conversely, are staying in the city.

Of course, the reason all of this is worth raising is because of the well-documented issues with crime in the most populous city in the Americas. The NFL has its fingers crossed that there won’t be any problems, of course, given the growth in popularity of American football in Brazil, and how important an international market it could become moving forward. But as for what the NFL and the teams can control, they aren’t leaving much to chance.

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Nix started more games in college than any quarterback in history. / Marc Lebryk-USA TODAY Sports

The gap in experience with the rookie quarterbacks needs to be noted. So with that in mind, consider this—when Michael Penix Jr. suited up for the Indiana spring game in April 2018, Caleb Williams, Drake Maye and J.J. McCarthy were high school freshmen in D.C., Charlotte and Chicago, respectively. And when those three were college freshmen, Penix, Jayden Daniels and Bo Nix were NFL afterthoughts in search of new beginnings, each in the midst of a transfer from one big-conference program to another.

As such, it’s fair to expect more from the older guys.

Purdy’s success as an NFL rookie is a perfect example of why. A four-year starter at Iowa State, Purdy graduated with 1,467 collegiate passing attempts (the guy he leapfrogged in San Francisco, Trey Lance, had just 318), which equates to many chances to test himself, see coverages, take hits, weaponize his own offensive scheme against defenses and just to plain see things and learn. Those with the Niners would tell you that the result was a thoroughly prepared rookie, one who’d wind up in the NFC title game.

With that in mind, here’s the rundown for the 2024 first-round QBs in games played, starts made and throws attempted …

• Williams, Bears: 37 games, 33 starts, 1,099 attempts

• Daniels, Commanders: 55 games, 55 starts, 1,438 attempts

• Maye, Patriots: 30 games, 26 starts, 952 attempts

• Penix, Falcons: 48 games, 45 starts, 1,685 attempts

• McCarthy, Vikings: 40 games, 28 starts, 713 attempts

• Nix, Broncos: 61 games, 61 starts, 1,936 attempts

So, just to contextualize: Nix has twice as much experience as Maye, and Penix has twice as much experience as McCarthy. That, if you talk to coaches, is really significant.

So you should expect more from Nix in Year 1. It also means Williams might have to improvise a little more as a rookie because he doesn’t have the library of experience in his head that Penix does. And that Maye and McCarthy will likely benefit from the redshirt year that’s been planned for the former, and will happen for the latter (due to injury).

Anyway, thanks to the bonus COVID-19 year and the increasing prevalence of the transfer portal, we find ourselves in this circumstance. It’ll be an interesting one to follow.

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The Lamb and Jefferson deals are, really, apples to apples. Both were drafted in 2020, and waited an extra year to do extensions with their teams. Both were on fifth-year options going into the offseason, Jefferson’s worth $19.743 million, Lamb’s at $17.911 million. And if you see Jefferson’s deal as groundbreaking, and it was, then Lamb did really well, too.

Here’s the side-by-side.

• Lamb’s full guarantee at signing was $67 million, which falls well short of the $88.743 million Jefferson got in Minnesota. That said, Lamb got a $100 million injury guarantee, and all of that vests as fully guaranteed a year early, which makes that number virtually guaranteed. Jefferson’s injury guarantees, which vest the same way, come to a more comparable number of $110 million.

• How fast you get your money is always a key for players. Along those lines, Lamb’s $38 million signing bonus beats Jefferson’s, which was $36.938 million. So, too, does Lamb’s money in 2024—he’s at $39.15 million while Jefferson’s at $38.063 million, which is a nice win for Lamb since he was scheduled to make less than Jefferson would have on their rookie deals this year.

• Jefferson jumps in front in years two and three, but it’s not by a ton. Jefferson will make $69.9 million the next two years, while Lamb will make $67 million. Jefferson will make $95.7 million over the next three seasons, while Lamb will make $93 million.

So in the end, Dallas went into Jefferson territory without leapfrogging what Minnesota did for its star receiver. That, I think, is a fair result for everyone, and I can say is further than Dallas initially wanted to go. Now, we’ll see what happens with Dak Prescott.

And we’ll see if there’s an impact that all of this winds up having on the Cowboys’ season.

When I talked to Mike McCarthy about it a month ago, he was very upfront in explaining that he wasn’t going to tiptoe around these things with his team.

“All of us have contracts, and it happens,” he said, as a guy in a contract year himself. “I just learned this at a young point in my head coaching career in Green Bay—if you put any more energy into it, then you’re probably wasting time thinking about things that you can’t control. Because you can’t control it. I’ve never really gone sideways with it. What I found is the individuals that are going through contract situations, you’re almost apologetic about it. You’re in this position for a reason. It’s between the employer and the employee.

“It’s part of our everyday business. Going through it 17, 18 years ago, you learn that it’s really part of the ride here. The reality of it is you have to be clear what’s going on with the other players.”

And McCarthy, to his credit, has been.

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Ja’Marr Chase’s contract negotiations could be expedited by Aiyuk’s agreement. / Sam Greene-The Enquirer-USA TODAY Sports

As I see it, the Lamb contract should simplify things for the Cincinnati Bengals and Ja’Marr Chase. Earlier in the summer, I sensed some frustration from Cincinnati—the team wanted to negotiate, and get something done with Chase, but his camp was moving slowly, if at all, on playing their part in it.

I think the Lamb deal is probably what needed to happen to break the stalemate.

Chase and Jefferson were in touch, of course, throughout Jefferson’s negotiation. Remember, Chase is the same guy who opted out of his final college season during the pandemic, so it’s not like he hasn’t considered major business decisions as a football player before. In this case, he certainly knew how his buddy could change the market and, given the extra year he had on his contract, would materially impact his own negotiation.

The problem from there was the gap that existed between Jefferson, and the cluster of young receivers—Miami’s Jaylen Waddle, Detroit’s Amon-Ra St. Brown, Philly’s DeVonta Smith and Houston’s Nico Collins—that did big second contracts this offseason. The Tyreek Hill and A.J. Brown restructures didn’t really apply, either, since both were more raises/adjustments to existing deals.

What Lamb’s deal does then, because of the similarities we ran through above, is confirm that Jefferson’s contract is now the going rate for the super elite at the position rather than some sort of outlier contract to be dismissed. It won’t help the Bengals save money on Chase, but it does crystallize what it’ll cost to sign him now, and that it’ll probably be even more expensive to do in 2025.

The thing that’s never been a question is whether Chase would be with the Bengals for the long-term. They’ve already tacitly chosen him over Tee Higgins as the guy to pair with Joe Burrow moving forward. What’s left to do in the coming days is a marquee deal like the Vikings and Cowboys did with Jefferson and Lamb to make sure you’re not paying another tax on it next year, and with one fewer year on the contract to spread the damage out.

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Don’t be surprised if Justin Fields becomes the Steelers’ starter at some point this season. I’ll build off what I said last week, and say that it does make sense for Pittsburgh to start the season with Russell Wilson at quarterback. If the coaches think it’s close, and they do, and there’s doubt with each guy, it’s logical to give yourself two shots at getting the most important position on the field right.

It’s much easier, for obvious reasons, to go from Wilson to Fields at midseason than it would be the other way around. In fact, had Mike Tomlin picked Fields, there’d be some question as to whether you could carry Wilson on the roster at all.

In this scenario, they’ll get a look at what a work-in-progress offense looks like with Wilson. If it doesn’t work? Well, this is a roster that’s been through change at quarterback in consecutive seasons already and a roster, I’m told, that really likes and respects Fields.

In 2022, Tomlin benched Mitch Trubisky in mid-October to go to a first-round rookie in Kenny Pickett, who wasn’t really involved in the quarterback competition that summer between Trubisky and Mason Rudolph. Last year, Pickett might have been benched if he didn’t get hurt in November. Trubisky was benched in favor of Rudolph in Week 16, and Tomlin stuck with Rudolph even though Pickett could’ve played in Weeks 17 and 18, and the team’s wild-card-round loss to the Buffalo Bills.

Bottom line: This isn’t anyone’s first rodeo in Pittsburgh, and Fields took some fundamental changes that the offensive coaches gave him (one being a return to the type of footwork he’d used at Ohio State), and really worked on them over the past few weeks of camp. It was enough to have some folks internally push for Fields to start. There was, too, plenty of merit to the idea. But the way it is now, again, to give yourself two shots, also makes plenty of sense.

And if that leads Fields to starting in Week 5 or 8 or 12, I wouldn’t be surprised.

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The owners appear to be creating a fork in the road for Tom Brady. I’ve held on to a little nugget I uncovered at the end of last year that I thought, at least at the time, was telling—Brady was there for the final practice of the Las Vegas Raiders’ 2023 season. At the time, of course, Vegas had an interim coach, Antonio Pierce, and was preparing to search for both a coach and GM. And seeing Brady on that day carried some weight, and raised questions for the guys there.

How involved would he be in the remake of the Raiders?

The answer, to this point? Not much. Raiders owner Mark Davis’s attempts to give him a piece of the team at a discounted rate were summarily rejected by Davis’s peers, and the team wound up hiring Tom Telesco as GM and taking the interim tag off Pierce’s title.

That said, Brady wouldn’t make a bid to buy a piece of the Raiders without an interest in helping to run it, and he knew how his presence at that practice in January would be perceived. Also, a good friend and celebrated teammate of his, Richard Seymour, was on the Raiders’ search committee that month. Brady’s longtime body coach, Alex Guerrero, is now working for the team, too, after making a difference last year for guys such as Maxx Crosby.

All of that is part of the backdrop for the news that came last week from Seth Wickersham at ESPN. Owners met in Minneapolis to vote on a private-equity matter while also finalizing a unique set of rules for Brady as a broadcaster. Brady will be subject to league rules as they apply to other owners while his approval as a partner of Davis’s group is pending, which means he can’t criticize game officials or other teams, and is subject to the NFL’s gambling and anti-tampering policies.

Additionally, he won’t be allowed at the practice facilities of the other 31 teams, or be able to attend production meetings, which are a vital piece of building weekly game broadcasts for the networks and their personalities.

To me, that really says that the owners are telling Brady to pick a lane. If he wants to be an active minority team owner, that’s fine. If he wants to be a broadcaster, clearly, it’d be really good for the owners if he was great at it. But they’re not going let him do both. So if and when Brady gets a formalized piece of the Raiders, juggling jobs won’t be made easy for him.

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I agree with Bill Cowher on how the new kickoff will impact the onside kick. Suffice it to say, the ex-Steelers coach doesn’t see how teams now need to declare onside kicks as a positive byproduct of the change in rules.

Cowher’s vested interest ties to history, too—he successfully ran a surprise onside kick in Super Bowl XXX, 14 years before the Saints and Sean Payton pulled off “Ambush.”

“I understand the numbers are low. But on an onside kick, the numbers should be low,” Cowher told CBS Sports, for whom he works. “It’s a unique play. It’s a hard play. It’s a strategic part of the game. It slows down the front line. I’ve done it a lot as a special teams coach. It’s a fun play and a strategic play. That’s why I always fought for the onside kick as part of the competition committee when I was on it.

“If anybody thought of taking it away, I brought up my play in the Super Bowl. But, unfortunately, I’m not in the league anymore, so I didn’t get the chance this time.”

The new rule states that a team has to declare its intention to onside kick to the officials ahead of time, and can only do it if trailing in the fourth quarter.

The reality is that there’s really no way around this, with the way that the new dynamic kickoff will be set up now. And I do have high hopes that the new play will be both safer and more exciting. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a shame to see an old element of pro football die like this.

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Xavier Worthy is part of Kansas City’s plan to bring the deep ball back to its offense. / Denny Medley-USA TODAY Sports

We won’t get to see the full breadth of what the Kansas City Chiefs are going to be offensively on Thursday night. One thing that was really clear after talking with Kansas City people, and visiting their camp this summer was reintroducing the big play to their offense.

In 2022 and ’23, after more and more teams went to two-high coverages on them in ’20 and ’21, the Chiefs dealt Tyreek Hill and pivoted to bigger-body receivers that could be open-field problems in the space such coverages would create. It worked, too, to the tune of two Super Bowl titles, with a death-by-a-thousand-paper-cuts approach only further illustrating the greatness of Mahomes—who deftly adjusted his game for the new plan.

This year, they’d planned to pivot back.

It’s more complicated than just this, but the idea was to have burners Marquise “Hollywood” Brown and Xavier Worthy lining up outside and stretching the field, opening space underneath for run-after-catch specialists such as Rashee Rice and Travis Kelce in a Randy Moss–Wes Welker pick-your-poison kind of way. Through the early weeks of camp, the idea was coming together fast, and had everyone believing the offense would make a big jump as a result. Or as much as one that just won the Super Bowl could make.

Then, Brown dislocated his shoulder and, while Reid has said his rehab is moving incredibly fast, the Chiefs probably won’t have the ex-Raven and Cardinal for a couple of weeks. On top of that, Worthy’s a rookie. A talented one, sure, but still a rookie.

So what you see Thursday night won’t provide a full view of the Chiefs’ offensive vision for 2024. Which is too bad.

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With the season here, we’ve got your quick-hitting takeaways. Ten of them, right here, right now …

• Good to hear that Ricky Pearsall is doing alright after being shot in a robbery attempt in San Francisco on Saturday. On Sunday, San Francisco’s rookie receiver was upgraded from serious to fair condition. He spent Saturday night at San Francisco General Hospital.

• That the Chiefs were in the running for Josh Jacobs—who said so himself this week, and that the Packers got him—I think is a good indication of smart teams now seeing the market at the running back position depressed to the point where signing a star veteran is actually a bargain. The Eagles going and getting Saquon Barkley is more evidence of it.

• If you know Mike Zimmer, you’re not surprised at the honesty he showed Mark Craig of the Minnesota Star Tribune. And good for him. Zimmer’s been through a lot. I’d imagine the idea of creating headlines doesn’t scare him much (if it ever did).

• I like the Los Angeles Rams bringing in ex-Nebraska coach Scott Frost as an analyst. He’ll provide insights into the college game. This is another example, too, of Sean McVay adding resources to his staff, and the Rams investing in those (game management coordinator John Streicher is another example).

• Colorado WR/CB Travis Hunter stands to be one of the most interesting draft prospects I’ve seen in two decades covering the league. He’s there with Myles Jack, Chris Gamble, Champ Bailey and Charles Woodson among the few I can remember who were true two-way players—and not just moonlighting on one side of the ball while going full-time on the other.

• While we’re there, there might be some style-vs.-substance questions with that Colorado program, but quarterback Shedeur Sanders looks to me like he’s going to check both of those boxes for scouts. Behind a messy offensive line, Deion’s son looks very, very impressive.

• Haason Reddick’s stalemate enters game week, and I have to think there’s a resolution here, probably through a set of incentives that give him a chance to make more money while not setting a really bad precedent for the team on holdouts.

• Mike McDaniel’s three-year extension is well deserved—and the Miami Dolphins coach actually benefited here from doing a four-year deal in the first place. If he had gotten a fifth year, the Dolphins might not have been as motivated to get him locked up this early.

• Good to see Baltimore Ravens TE Mark Andrews back in good spirits, and making some good of it in emphasizing the importance of wearing a seatbelt. In an accident where his car flipped near the team facility, it probably saved his life.

• Based on all I’ve heard, I’m really excited to see Daniels start for the Commanders on Sunday.