The San Francisco 49ers were going to trade wide receiver Brandon Aiyuk.
In a wild story on the NFL on Fox pregame show, Fox’s Jay Glazer reported the 49ers were on the phone with the Pittsburgh Steelers to execute a trade the day Aiyuk wound up agreeing to his contract.
According to Glazer, Aiyuk got to the team facility early the day he got his deal done. He went to speak with head coach Kyle Shanahan, who then tried calling the front office to get them to stop the deal. Shanahan couldn’t get them on the phone because they were talking to the Steelers to finalize the deal, so Shanahan ran to the front office and told them to hold off on making a trade.
After that, Shanahan and general manager John Lynch talked with Aiyuk for two hours and gave him a choice: he could agree to the contract they had on the table, or he was being traded after the team’s practice on Aug. 29.
Ultimately the 2023 All-Pro WR decided he wanted to stay in San Francisco and accepted the four-year, $120 million contract.
This story from Glazer makes sense given other reporting around the deal. Lynch was visibly frustrated with Aiyuk in a press conference on Wednesday. ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported the 49ers’ contract offer for Aiyuk had been on the table for nearly three weeks. Aiyuk also told reporters he made negotiations more difficult than they needed to be.
It feels like the crazy wrinkles to the Aiyuk contract talks are going to keep emerging every few weeks because the talks were so prolonged with so many moving parts and potential trades.
The good news for the 49ers is that Aiyuk is now under contract for at least the next four seasons, and he’ll be on the field Monday night when they open their regular season schedule against the New York Jets.
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