The worst-kept secret in football might not even qualify as a secret anymore.
The 49ers, desperate to reset their balance sheets ahead of the 2025 season for reasons that straddle the line between hubris and ignorance, are trying to trade wide receiver Brandon Aiyuk before April 1.
Doing so would not only rid them of the injured receiver but, more importantly, the money remaining on his contract, with $31 million in future injury guarantees vesting next Tuesday, per OverTheCap.
Call it buyer’s remorse. The 49ers’ front office wasn’t unified in its decision to give Aiyuk the $120 million contract he signed late last August. With his catastrophic knee injury (which could keep him out for more than half the 2025 season, conservatively), San Francisco has little reason to let the bulk of that contract hit the team’s books.
The question isn’t whether the 49ers want to trade Aiyuk. They do.
No, the question is how much are they willing to pay not to pay him?
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This sort of problem happens constantly in the NBA, where big-money contracts are nearly universally guaranteed. Every major trade or free agent period, you’ll see big contracts, with the players in tow, moved around the league in expert bits of accounting. There’s a cottage industry for it, too, with bad teams deliberately carrying extra salary cap room so they can take on bad contracts.
Why? Because the team dumping the bad deal will sweeten the pot with a young, exciting, cheap player or, more frequently, with draft picks.
I think the Niners will have to do something similar if they want to jettison Aiyuk before his big invoices hit.
Last August, the Niners had multiple trade offers for the wide receiver, with at least one, Cleveland’s second-rounder-and-Amari-Cooper offer, being quite strong.
Seven months later, the Niners won’t get a nice pick and a good player for Aiyuk. In fact, to move Aiyuk, they’d likely have to include the nice pick or player.
The list of teams interested in Aiyuk has certainly diminished. Maybe Cleveland is in. Maybe New England is, too. Both were suitors last time around.
Or maybe they’re out. Whereas last summer, I was drowning in buzz, rumor, and innuendo about an Aiyuk trade, these days, I’m hearing nothing.
And logically, why would anyone hear anything but the Niners calling into the void?
The NFL Draft is in a month. It’s not particularly loaded at wide receiver, but it’s not bad, either. Why take on a receiver worth big bucks and with big questions about his future when you can take two or three cheap kids in the draft?
A sane NFL team would always choose the latter.
That’s why San Francisco will have to provide the additional value — the sweetener — in any Aiyuk move.
Because for the Niners, it’s now or practically never on trading Aiyuk. The receiver has no guaranteed money on the books in 2026 and beyond. The Niners can cut him with a post-June 1 designation at the end of the 2025 season and save more than $100 million against the cap over the next four seasons.
Of course, that clean break only comes after a big check is cut for this season.
So, how committed are the 49ers to austerity?
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Committed enough to include a nice draft pick — say their compensatory pick No. 138, or the fifth-rounder the Commanders send to San Francisco (pick No. 147) for Deebo Samuel — in a deal to clear Aiyuk from the books?
Without one, it’s hard to imagine a deal being made.
Frankly, it’s hard to imagine a deal getting made with one.
I’m sure the Niners would find a way to make such a deal look like a win. Trading a 2025 fourth-round pick for a 2026 third-round pick looks like a win to most folks. The problem is that the fourth-rounder has far greater value today. (For every year in the future, the immediate value of a pick is roughly halved.)
But anything to get off that deal, right?
Prominent people in the 49ers front office were adamant that an Aiyuk mega-deal would be an albatross around the team’s neck.
No victory laps will be taken, but mere months later, they’ve been proven right.
Aiyuk wanted an NBA-type contract, and he has one. Just like Joe Harris, Khris Middleton, or Marcus Smart, Aiyuk is a salary that needs to be dumped, at any cost.
