San Francisco 49ers
Brandon Aiyuk could have a new home in the coming days.
The 49ers have negotiated the frameworks for deals with the Browns and Patriots for the disgruntled wide receiver, Matt Maiocco of NBC Sports Bay Area reports.
It’s now in Aiyuk’s hands to see if he can work out a long-term contract with one of the two teams.
The 49ers have given the Browns, Patriots, Commanders and Steelers permission to negotiate with Aiyuk’s agent, Maiocco reports. The Commanders removed themselves from trade talks, and the Steelers declined to meet the 49ers’ trade demands, per Maiocco.
The Browns and Patriots have presented an offer to Aiyuk, who is holding in and not practicing at 49ers’ training camp.
He skipped the offseason program, and the slow progress of contract talks prompted him to ask for a trade.
Aiyuk is scheduled to make $14.124 million on a fifth-year option but wants a market value deal with 21 receivers now with an annual average at least $20 million.
Mary Kay Cabot of cleveland.com notes that the Browns could afford Aiyuk under their cap if Amari Cooper was part of the trade.
Five years later, Matt Breida is going back to where his NFL career started.
Via Jeremy Fowler of ESPN.com, Breida is signing with the 49ers.
He spent three seasons in San Francisco, from 2017 to 2019. He was traded to the Dolphins in 2020. He spent 2021 with the Bills and 2022 and 2023 with the Giants.
Per a source with knowledge of the situation, Breida tried out for the 49ers on Monday, along with running backs Anthony McFarland and Ke’Shawn Vaughn.
In seven NFL seasons, the 29-year-old Breida has 2,652 regular-season rushing yards, 935 receiving yards, and 15 touchdowns.
The 49ers currently have six other running backs on the roster, led by 2023 NFL offensive player of the year Christian McCaffrey.
Yes, intentions can change.
When receiver Brandon Aiyuk formally requested a trade three weeks ago, the 49ers reportedly has “no intention” to trade him. Now, the 49ers reportedly are talking to multiple teams about a potential deal.
Via Matt Barrows of TheAthletic.com, “multiple teams” have contacted the 49ers about a potential trade. No deal has been done, yet.
Earlier today, in response to one report of a deal in place with the Steelers, a source with knowledge of the situation told PFT that “no decisions have been made.” Which possibly implies that a decision could be made, in time.
Before the draft, when Aiyuk was trying to get a multi-year deal from the 49ers, it was decided that he’d see whether another team would pay Aiyuk what he wants. And, we’re told, five teams were willing to do it. But the 49ers accepted none of their trade offers.
Possible destinations include the Steelers, Commanders, Browns, and Patriots. The challenge will be striking a deal that gives the 49ers value in 2024, and not just one or more draft picks for 2025.
Aiyuk is under contract through 2024, at a base salary of $14.1 million. He has been holding in — present but not practicing — since training camp opened last month.
Offensive lineman Pat Elflein didn’t last long in 49ers camp.
Signed by the team on Friday, Elflein landed on injured reserve Monday, the team announced. Elflein injured a calf.
Elflein, 30, most recently appeared in a game in 2022 when he started six contests for the Panthers. He signed with the Cardinals in July 2023 but was placed on injured reserve in late August.
A third-round pick of Minnesota in 2017, Elflein has started 65 career games for the Vikings, Jets and Panthers.
The 49ers filled the roster spot by signing offensive lineman Lewis Kidd to a one-year deal.
Kidd entered the NFL by signing with the Saints as an undrafted free agent in 2022. He has appeared in 13 games with one start with the Saints.
Kidd most recently was with the Colts, who waived him on July 31.
Brandon Aiyuk has attended the 49ers’ practices, but he hasn’t practiced.
While he continues to wait for a long-term contract, the receiver is holding in. He is lifting weights, doing conditioning, attending meetings and being around his teammates, but he is not doing any on-field work.
49ers receivers coach Leonard Hankerson said Monday that Aiyuk has been engaged in team activities.
“He’s been doing awesome,” Hankerson said, via David Bonilla of 49erswebzone.com. “He’s been coming to me, and he’s been sitting there, looking at the film. And he’s there like all the other guys. He’s around the teammates and stuff, and it’s been good just having him around.”
Aiyuk is scheduled to make $14.124 million on a fifth-year option but wants a market value deal with 21 receivers now with annual averages at $20 million or above.
The slow pace of negotiations has prompted a trade request from Aiyuk, who skipped the team’s offseason program.
“We didn’t get a chance to have him around in OTAs, and now that he is here, it’s all good, having a full group with him being there,” Hankerson said. “Him and the guys, they still communicate. So it’s been good.”
You’ll likely hear from time to time this year that 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy, at $985,000, is criminally underpaid. Absent one key fact, that’s horribly misleading.
By rule, the 49ers can’t give him another contract until the completion of the 2024 regular season.
For now, Purdy is supplementing his six-figure salary in a seven- and eight-figure industry by marketing opportunities.
“Yeah, for me, obviously I don’t make a whole lot,” Purdy told reporters on Sunday. “I make a good amount playing football. But just with the lifestyle and the privacy for my wife and I and the things that we’re able to do with my family outside of football, we’ve got to make some kind of money somehow. So marketing’s a great opportunity for us. So, yeah, a business or an organization will hit up my agent and he’ll bring it to me and he’ll say, ‘Hey, this aligns with who you are and what you believe or this might not, so we can pass on it.’ So, those are the decisions that go into it. But for me, like I said, I’m trying to provide for my wife and my family moving forward with our life because you never know. Tomorrow’s not promised. So, we’ve tried to be smart about it, but there’s been some good opportunities this offseason and that’s why I’ve been able to do some.”
One of the reporters focused on one of the words he used: Privacy.
“Yeah, just security with our house, where we live and when we travel and stuff, being able to fly first class and do like those kinds of things,” Purdy said. “Ubers, the more expensive ones, where they are more private. I don’t know how to describe it, but I’m just thinking long-term for my wife and I. Yes, the privacy aspect, like with privacy comes expenses, and it’s a little bit more expensive with that kind of lifestyle. So that’s what I’m thinking of.”
He’s actually right. While the vast majority of Americans don’t make nearly $1 million per year, Purdy finds himself in a status that greatly exceeds his W-2. From travel to living arrangements to overall security, those costs aren’t as easily covered by $985,000 as they are by the current top of the market — $55 million.
It’s all the more reason for Purdy to, on one hand, focus entirely on doing his job to the best of his abilities and, on the other, counting the days until the 2024 regular season ends and he can sign a contract that will pay him what he deserves.
Once again, players on their rookie contracts can sign second deals after the conclusion of their third regular seasons. It can be done before a playoff game is played.
Given what happened to Purdy in the postseason two years ago, Purdy has every reason to tell his agent to begin laying the foundation now for a contract to be teed up and signed on Monday, January 7, 2025. And Purdy should be prepared to play hardball with the 49ers if they aren’t prepared to give him significant injury security before he takes the field in the playoffs, if the 49ers qualify again.
As the first weekend of the preseason approaches, one of the common questions will relate to which key players will play in the games that don’t count, and which ones won’t.
For 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy, who’s in his first “normal” training camp as the full-time starter (last year, he was still coming back from elbow surgery), his reps for Saturday’s visit to the Titans remain to be determined.
“We haven’t talked about that, so just taking it one day at a time,” Purdy told reporters on Sunday. “I think it all just depends on how practices go and my reps and how I’m feeling and stuff. But, I’m sure we’ll make a decision here as the game comes closer.”
After Purdy, Josh Dobbs and Brandon Allen are battling for the backup job. Both of them undoubtedly will play extensively in Tennessee.
Purdy was also asked at his press conference about his rash of interceptions; his prior comments came in a visit to KNBR radio.
“I take pride in protecting the ball for our offense and our team,” Purdy said. “And so obviously, I’m mad when I’m not completing the ball to our guys and it’s going to the defense. I’m hard on myself and the coaches are, too. We have a standard here. So it’s not [that] we’re just going out and just because it’s practice it’s okay to throw picks. No, there’s still a standard here. But with that is, I know you guys have heard me say this all over the media, but now’s the time to be trying out some stuff in terms of throwing some windows and some tight coverages and whatnot. But you know, I still have to grow. I still have to be better and I’m hard on myself with it. But now’s the time to do it. I remember last year coming off my UCL at practice, I was throwing some stuff, and I threw multiple days of picks. But you get into the season and you’re ready for those moments and you’re ready to execute and protect the ball. So that’s where we’re at in the time of year.”
Purdy’s irritation with the interception depends on how the interception happened.
“It depends on what kind of pick it is,” he said. “If I’m trying to fit it in a window and trying to just be aggressive or I just couldn’t see a guy, those are the questions you have to ask yourself. And that’s what I do, ask myself. And obviously, I get pretty mad at myself in terms of, ‘Dude, you turned the ball over and you can’t do that.’ So it’s finding a way to grow mentally for myself in terms of, ‘Dude, you can’t do that.’ Or, ‘Hey, I was being aggressive here and we’re just trying it out and I’m seeing if I can do it with this guy and that kind of window or that kind of look.’ But at the end of the day, I’m not out there trying to just throw the ball up and act like it’s camp and I don’t care, because I do.”
It makes sense, but seven picks in two practices are still a lot of picks. Eyes will be on him whenever he plays in the preseason. And he’ll need to be ready to minimize turnovers in a Week 1 Monday night duel against Aaron Rodgers and a very competent Jets defense.
That game happens in only five weeks.
Earlier this week, Rams coach Sean McVay tried to downplay the sentence added to the rule book regarding “cheat motion.” On Saturday, Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel most definitely did not downplay it.
“To execute in the game of football, I would say it’s a priority to know the rules,” McDaniel told when asked by reporters about the new sentence regarding abrupt or forward pre-snap motion. “Fortunately, we have NFL officials here at practice. Currently — they were here yesterday, they’ll be here today. And we also have a little a cheat code, if you will, a member of the competition committee [G.M. Chris Grier] resides in an office that shares a wall with me. So [we’re] very, very proactive in knowing exactly what the rules are and anything that we do, we’re either adjusting or catering to any sort of rule emphasis and we’re going to try to keep it that way.”
He was asked whether the new sentence is not a rule change but an effort to emphasize the existing rules.
“I think you read it as it reads,” McDaniel said. “The emphasis is clearly stated. If you interpret that as exclusively timing motions, you better not simulate the snap counter. You’d better not move forward. And our motions will have to be legal for them to work unless we just want to run minus-five-yard plays, so I think we’re fine with that. We’ll always cater to the rules and I think to simulate the snap is illegal and we should not do that.”
Here’s the new sentence from the 2024 rule book: “Any eligible backfield player who changes his stance does not have to come to a complete stop prior to the snap, as long as his actions are not abrupt (false start) or forward (illegal motion).”
“Cheat motion” is effective in large part because the movements are often abrupt and players routinely start moving forward just before the snap. Joe Rose of WQAM in Miami, who works on radio call of Dolphins games, said Friday that other teams (including the Patriots and former head coach Bill Belichick) complained about Dolphins players moving forward before the snap.
While the rules aren’t changing, the teams that use “cheat motion” (mainly, the Rams, Dolphins, and 49ers) are on notice. Also on notice are officials, who’ll have to spot the player moving forward just before the snap and send a signal from brain to hand to pull the flag while also sending a signal from brain to mouth to blow the whistle and kill a play that has already started — with linemen colliding at full speed.
If officials fail to call it, it will keep happening. And teams will keep doing it. And other teams will complain about it. Just like last year.
Which is why it’s actually smart for coaches who use it to downplay it. Unless and until the officials are willing and able to consistently call it, the teams that have perfected it should keep doing it.
Patrick Willis was one of the best linebackers in football when he played, but the former 49ers linebacker played only eight seasons. He didn’t know if that would be long enough to earn him a place into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
But in his fifth year of eligibility, it was.
Willis took his rightful place in Canton on Saturday, along with six others.
“The Night — Oct. 13, 2014. I still remember the last play of my NFL career, and what I heard inside me,” Willis said in beginning his speech. “I heard, ‘Job well done my son, my faithful and loyal servant.’ In that moment, I realized I had completed what I had come to do, with the time the Lord had allotted me to play in the National Football League. It’s not necessarily how long you play, but how impactful you are.
“This was the last day I played in the NFL.”
Willis recounted growing up in a trailer at the end of a dirt road with no running water until he was 8.
“We lived at the bottom of a hill, and my grandparents lived at the top,” Willis said. “Every day my siblings and I would carry empty 5-gallon plastic buckets up the hill to get water from my grandparents’ house, then carry them back down. I remember when I was carrying those buckets, I would tell myself, ‘If I can make it from here all the way to the house without stopping, I’m going to get stronger.’ No doubt I was getting physically stronger, but I didn’t know at the time that I was also building inner strength.”
Willis made the Pro Bowl each of his first seven seasons in the NFL and five times was All-Pro. He made 950 tackles, 20.5 sacks and eight interceptions and was on the Pro Football Hall of Fame’s 2010s All-Decade Team.
In 2021, the 49ers inducted Willis into the team’s Edward J. DeBartolo Sr. Hall of Fame.
A first-round pick of the 49ers in 2007, Willis had dreamed of becoming a Hall of Famer years earlier. That day finally came in a weather-delayed ceremony.
“I am elated to know that I will no longer be known simply as Patrick Willis, but as Hall of Famer Patrick Willis, Mr. 378,” Willis said. “I salute my high school, college, and NFL brothers. Now, what a privilege it is to stand with my Hall of Fame brothers in the Hall of Football Immortality.”
Earlier this year, Tom Brady kicked the door open on possibly returning to the NFL during the 2024 season. He has yet to slam the door shut.
And if he ultimately unretires for the second time, he’d be only the third person to play at 47 or older. And he’d be the first quarterback to play at that age.
He definitely still could. His arm will stay strong into his 50s. As to his mobility, he hasn’t lost much because he never had much. By the end of his career, he had perfected the art of sensing a collapsing pocket and getting rid of the ball before he got blown up by someone half his age — even if it meant throwing an interception, or two.
Brady will start working for Fox this year. He’ll have to follow current quarterback play closely. It might make him more inclined to come back, once he sees what current players are doing and he realizes he could still do it better.
Where would he fit among other quarterbacks? Former Patriots offensive coordinator Charlie Weis recently suggested that, with the 49ers, Brady would be a top-5 or top-10 player at the position. This year, however, the 49ers don’t need him. (Last year, they were interested.)
If/when starting quarterbacks go down, will Brady’s phone ring? It depends on the backup, and on other options. It also hinges on the willingness of the team to bring him in and let him play right away.
Is it likely? No. Is it possible? Absolutely.