San Francisco 49ers' waiting game with Brandon Aiyuk looking increasingly foolish after latest NFL news
The wide receiver market has officially been reset, with the latest major deal at the position illustrating a missed opportunity for the San Francisco 49ers. Monday saw the Minnesota Vikings sign All-Pro Justin Jefferson to a four-year extension worth $140 million with $110 million guaranteed. A staggering $88.7 million is fully guaranteed. It's a deal […]
The wide receiver market has officially been reset, with the latest major deal at the position illustrating a missed opportunity for the San Francisco 49ers.
Monday saw the Minnesota Vikings sign All-Pro Justin Jefferson to a four-year extension worth $140 million with $110 million guaranteed. A staggering $88.7 million is fully guaranteed.
It's a deal that makes Jefferson the highest-paid non-quarterback in the NFL, surpassing 49ers defensive end Nick Bosa.
With the amount of wide receivers seeking new deals, it was always likely that Bosa's five-year, $170 million contract was going to be surpassed in terms of average annual salary.
The Vikings were always going to pay Jefferson, who, after four successive 1,000-yard seasons that have seen him established as the premier receiver in the NFL, was always likely to command such a contract.
It is the inevitability of Jefferson receiving this historic deal that makes the 49ers' failure to take the opportunity to sign All-Pro wideout Brandon Aiyuk to an extension before the resetting of the market all the more puzzling.
San Francisco has typically stuck to a timeline of paying its star players by training camp but, with so many wideouts essentially queuing up to receive lucrative extensions, accelerating the process with Aiyuk would have made sense.
The 49ers have not done so and, on the eve of mandatory minicamp, there has been no indication a deal is on the horizon.
Aiyuk is said to be seeking a deal that will pay him more than the $28 million a year Amon-Ra St. Brown got in his extension from the Detroit Lions. With the Dallas Cowboys' negotiations with CeeDee Lamb expected to "speed up" — per Josina Anderson of CBS Sports — in the wake of the Jefferson deal, Aiyuk's leverage to land such a contract is only continuing to grow the longer this saga drags on.
Though Aiyuk has not matched Jefferson's production since they both entered the league as first-round picks in 2020, he ranks first in Expected Points Added per play and third in success rate among all pass-catchers (min. 100 plays) over the last two seasons, per nflindex.com.
As such, he and his team may feel justified in asking for a contract that isn't too far behind that of Jefferson, whose level of fully guaranteed money will surely embolden Aiyuk in asking for full guarantees in the region of the previous high for receivers. Tyreek Hill now sits second behind Jefferson with $52.5 million fully guaranteed.
In previous years, the 49ers have had success waiting until final days before camp to get these deals done. However, the inherent risk in continuing with that strategy this offseason with a plethora of receivers looking to land big-time contracts was obvious from the start.
The Jefferson contract in all likelihood represents a zenith for wide receivers for the time being. The chances of Aiyuk or any other wideout topping it this offseason are very slim. Yet it's another development that serves to strengthen Aiyuk's hand in not only getting his desired average salary, but also a much larger amount of fully guaranteed money.
San Francisco's waiting game with Aiyuk is costing the 49ers money. The longer it goes on, the less sense it makes.
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A very sad day for the franchise.
