It's been a rocky offseason for Brandon Aiyuk and the San Francisco 49ers. After a breakout 2023 campaign, Aiyuk entered the offseason looking for a new deal with the Niners. Unfortunately, no progress has been made towards a new contract, and that officially led to Aiyuk requesting a trade on Tuesday afternoon.
While Aiyuk's name has floated around in trade rumors all offseason long, San Fran has shown no desire to trade him, which leaves things at a standstill. The way the 49ers have handled the situation has drawn a lot of criticism from fans, and former linebacker Emmaunel Acho took a second to explain the biggest mistake the team has made throughout this entire saga.
49ers need to hash things out with Brandon Aiyuk
The 49ers handling of Aiyuk's contract situation has certainly been strange. He only has one year left on his current deal, and while his salary is jumping from $2.3 million to $14.1 million, it makes sense for him to want his long-term future to be resolved. And realistically, San Francisco's front office should want to hammer something out in an effort to prevent Aiyuk from potentially hitting the open market next offseason.
Acho thinks that the team's decision to alienate Aiyuk and give him the cold shoulder all offseason long was a bad move. Aiyuk has been pretty open about the whole situation on social media, and yet the front office hasn't budged at all. It's not hard to see why the talented wideout is frustrated, and it's a bit surprising that it took him this long to request a trade.
Aiyuk has gradually improved each season in his career so far, and he's fresh off easily the best season of his career in 2023 (75 REC, 1342 YDS, 7 TD). He earned a Second-Team All-Pro nod as a result of his strong play, and it's clear that one way or another, he's going to be getting a big pay raise at some point in the near future.
Whether that comes from the 49ers or not remains to be seen, though. Teams have continually checked in on Aiyuk, and after his trade request, you can bet those interested squads will be looping back around to send another offer San Francisco's way. At some point, the front office is going to have to decide whether they want to extend him, or whether they want to trade him.
Even if they go to the negotiating table, though, Acho points out that some serious damage in their relationship has been done as a result of the way the team handled these negotiations. Aiyuk's situation is certainly one to monitor, and it will be interesting to see if it ends up getting resolved before the start of the upcoming 2024 campaign.
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