Why Breer believes there’s ‘optimism’ 49ers will extend Aiyuk originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area
While Brandon Aiyuk and the 49ers currently are in arduous contract negotiations, Sports Illustrated’s Albert Breer believes there is reason for optimism that the two parties will agree to terms.
Speaking to Colin Cowherd on FS1’s “The Herd,” Breer explained why San Francisco fans should be hopeful that both sides will work out a new contract sometime soon.
“I think there are two things to give you some optimism that he could still be there [in San Francisco],” Breer said. “Number one is that they did get Christian McCaffrey [contract] done aggressively. And I think they had to do McCaffrey before they did Aiyuk because if you pay Aiyuk $29, $30 $31 million a year now the price of McCaffrey goes up, so you had to take care of him first.”
Breer went on to explain why he believes San Francisco wants to keep Aiyuk given his explosive skillset as a traditional wide receiver.
“The second thing is our mutual friend Mike Silver reported that they [offered] $26 million, that’s not that far off,” Breer told Cowherd. “And a lot of times these things get ugliest towards the end and the Deebo [Samuel] thing was not clean until it was at the very end.
“And I would tell you this, and I do feel strongly about this part, I think if you fed John Lynch and Kyle Shanahan truth serum and asked them who would you rather have on the roster, Deebo Samuel or Brandon Aiyuk moving forward I think they would answer Aiyuk.
“They love Deebo, Deebo can do a lot of different things for them, but Deebo is like a supercharged gadget player. Aiyuk is more of a typical number one receiver who can beat man coverage you can build an offense around.”
However, the NFL reporter also pointed out some possible situations where the team and the wideout could end up parting ways.
“So, do I think that they’re going to go to Justin Jefferson numbers to get Aiyuk signed? No,”…
..
