Will 49ers WR Brandon Aiyuk be a Captain in 2024?
Brandon Aiyuk is many things for the 49ers. He's an All Pro, an elite route runner, an excellent blocker, a vicious competitor and a tone-setter on the field. But he's not a captain.
Last season, the 49ers' captains were Deebo Samuel, Brock Purdy, Trent Williams, George Kittle, Arik Armstead and Fred Warner. Nick Bosa lost his status as a captain because he held out of mandatory minicamp, training camp and preseason.
That's why Aiyuk most likely will not become a captain for the first time this year. He wants to be one of the highest-paid and highest-regarded players on the team, and to achieve that goal he's holding out for a contract extension, just like Bosa did last year. Aiyuk wants the 49ers to acknowledge his importance.
And the 49ers have done just the opposite. They've shown Aiyuk just how replaceable they feel he is. That's why they drafted wide receiver Ricky Pearsall in Round 1.
No player who skips the offseason training programs can be a captain. Because a captain is a player who leads by example on and off the field and always puts the team first. Right now, Aiyuk is putting himself first while Samuel actually practices and leads.
I'm guessing the 49ers' captains this season will be Samuel, Purdy, Williams, Kittle, Bosa and Warner. Those are the six players on the roster that the 49ers feel are the cornerstones of the team and the locker room. Aiyuk is an excellent player, but he'll have to continue to mature before he's part of that select group of leaders.
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.