Will Brandon Aiyuk Ever Sign an Extension with the 49ers?
Is it really possible that 2024 will be Brandon Aiyuk's final season on the 49ers?
He says he wants to stay with the 49ers and they say they want to keep him for the rest of his career, but they're still far apart in contract negotiations according to reports. The 49ers have offered roughly $26 million per season while Brandon Aiyuk seems to want closer to $30 million per season. And so they're in a standoff.
Aiyuk wants $30 million per season because the Lions recently gave Amon-Ra St. Brown a four-year, $120 million extension and Aiyuk arguably is better than him. But the 49ers don't have to give Aiyuk all that money because he's under contract for one more year plus they can franchise tag him after that.
It's possible the two sides never will compromise, Aiyuk will play out the final year of his rookie deal and then the 49ers will franchise tag him and trade him next offseason. It's also possible they'll agree to a deal by the end of the month.
If the 49ers have offered $26 million per season and Aiyuk wants $30 million annually on average, it seems reasonable that the two sides could compromise at $28 million per season. Then they simply would have to figure out how much money to guarantee. If the 49ers were to guarantee roughly $50 million of the extension, I'm guessing Aiyuk would agree to it considering St. Brown got less than $35 million guaranteed.
As of now, it seems likely Aiyuk will sign his extension in the next few weeks. Until then, expect him to keep trolling us on social media.
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.