The 49ers’ contract fiasco with Brandon Aiyuk is the latest costly lesson every NFL franchise should heed for the future

Brandon Aiyuk’s saga with the 49ers holds a lesson that every NFL team should heed.

Kyle Crabbs — NFL National Writer

Nov 23, 2025 9:55 AM EST

Reports this week indicate that the San Francisco 49ers and wide receiver Brandon Aiyuk are destined for a split. It wasn’t all that long ago that San Francisco inked Aiyuk to a four-year, $120 million contract extension, tacked onto his fifth-year option for the 2024 season.

Less than a year and a half later, Aiyuk endured a major knee injury midway through 2024, has been missing in action with the team this season, and saw his 2026 guarantees voided due to his conduct.

Aiyuk, per a report from The Athletic’s Dianna Russini and Michael Silver, opted not to contest the voiding of his guarantees. See ya later, I guess.

How on earth did this situation go this sideways, this fast? Well, it shouldn’t take much of a look back at the buildup to him signing the contract to jog everyone’s memory. There’s a moral of the story for anyone who is willing to pay attention — there’s more to deciding who to pay the big bucks to than just how talented they are.

Brandon Aiyuk’s saga with 49ers is the latest reminder to NFL teams to be careful who they pay

Aiyuk, if you remember, was posturing that he did not want to be with the 49ers throughout the summer of 2024. There were overtures from several teams on the trade market as the 49ers struggled to nail down a contract.

The Pittsburgh Steelers apparently had the trade compensation to get a deal done, but the road to a deal buckled as the 49ers pressed Aiyuk’s hold-in during training camp. The spring and summer of 2024 also saw Aiyuk frequently in touch with his former college quarterback, Jayden Daniels, on social media. It fueled plenty of speculation that he wanted to go to Washington to reunite with Daniels.

I’d suspect we’ll hear a lot more of that noise over the next several months, as Aiyuk prepares to become a free agent.

But the standoff between San Francisco and Aiyuk during the summer of 2024 got messy in many ways, hinting that there was more to it than just maximizing a contract negotiation. Russini and Silver’s reporting on the story indicates that Aiyuk constantly moved the goal posts on the 49ers in their bid to appease his asks or, alternatively, offer him a fresh start elsewhere.

“The receiver’s relationship with the franchise became more strained as the hold-in dragged on. Shanahan, according to sources, took issue with Aiyuk’s distracting presence. The coach and other powerbrokers in the organization were also frustrated by Aiyuk changing his mind on contract terms he sought and what potential trade destinations were acceptable to him.”

— Dianna Russini & Michael Silver

The NFL, like everything else, is a people business. That’s often overlooked thanks to football’s current “Madden Culture” among fans, where players aren’t treated as people and instead viewed as football-playing avatars that show up on your television for three and a half hours once a week. But these are human beings. Their performance is not just predicated on physical talent, and their presence can positively uplift or negatively soil the performance of those around them.

Aiyuk gave plenty of indications that he did not want to be in San Francisco that summer. And as it turns out, the almighty dollar didn’t appease him, either. Now, the 49ers are left having paid $48,906,300 for seven games, 25 catches, and 374 yards between 2024 and 2025.

Had they not touched his contract on the fifth-year option in 2024, Aiyuk would have received $14.12 million for his play and likely would have been forced into playing much more inspired football because he lacked the long-term security that his $120 million contract (with $76 million guaranteed) provided him. That’s a painful $34.8 million lesson to learn.

Now, the question is whether the 49ers try to recoup any of his 2025 compensation due to conduct detrimental to the team. Perhaps this has been mutually agreed upon not to happen, given that Aiyuk has accepted the fate of his 2026 guarantees being voided. Or perhaps Aiyuk simply doesn’t care about anything other than getting to where he wants to go by any means necessary.

I am pro-players getting paid. Their shelf life in the game is limited, and they have every right to do what they can with whatever leverage they have to earn financial securities. But teams also have a right to say no.

With the benefit of hindsight, the 49ers surely wish they had said it to Aiyuk. The signs were there. Here’s to us remembering the moral of this story the next time such a saga arises across the league.

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