Readers will be shocked to hear that new information surfaced Monday about Brandon Aiyuk’s ongoing contract negotiations.
NFL Media’s Mike Garafolo reported once again that the 49ers and Aiyuk are close on a contract. Sports Illustrated’s Albert Breer said the 49ers and Pittsburgh Steelers offers for Aiyuk are in the same ballpark.
Unfortunately none of this really matters or gets us any closer to a resolution.
The same posturing and circling have been going on for multiple weeks now. As soon as the 49ers stopped trade talks with the Steelers it became clear where this was all heading. They’d either ink Aiyuk to a deal or send him to Pittsburgh for some trade package they aren’t happy with.
If the 49ers weren’t close on a contract they likely would have traded Aiyuk already. They certainly wouldn’t have upped their offer.
Now we’ve lost track of what ball is in whose court. Instead we’re left to watch these standoff between Aiyuk and the 49ers that apparently is down to some kind of minor detail per Garafolo.
Perhaps this is on Aiyuk and his agent at this point. Maybe they’re being sticklers over something small and dragging this out much longer than it needs to go.
However, it’s hard not to look at the 49ers and whatever happened in the period of time between when they decided to stop negotiating and when Aiyuk made his trade request a week before reporting to training camp.
These kind of things should have been getting hammered out a long time ago where a little bit of a standoff was acceptable. As the negotiations enter the third week of August, the standoff is no longer okay. Whatever the minor detail is needs to get ironed out, even if it means needing to make a couple of corresponding adjustments in future years because of Aiyuk’s contract structure.
At this point it no longer feels like the two sides are negotiating. It feels like they both know exactly what it’s going to take to get the deal done and neither side feels much urgency to push whatever button needs to be pushed to finalize it.
There are sure to be more reports as the Aiyuk drama envelops the rest of the NFL. It appears the only one that really matters at this point will be the one that says he’s either been signed or traded. Everything else is just continuing to spin the same wheels that have been spinning for the last two weeks.
