Brandon Aiyuk admits it’s “frustrating” that contract numbers were leaked to the public

The 49ers negotiation with Aiyuk has been made public at different times this offseason.

The San Francisco 49ers have continued to work with star receiver Brandon Aiyuk on a contract extension ahead of the 2024-25 season, going through the ups and downs of the lengthy process.

At times, the situation has turned very public this offseason, with Aiyuk and the team having fireworks of their own, leaving the negotiation still quite a bit away from being done at this stage in the offseason.

There has been a lot of reporting on the demands that Aiyuk has in comparison to what the 49ers are actually offering, with Sports Illustrated’s Albert Breer recently sharing that the team has been around the $26 million per year range, while believing that the wideout will ultimately get around $29 million a year when it’s said and done, pushing him past the likes of Amon-Ra St. Brown and Jaylen Waddle annually.

With some numbers going public, has that been frustrating for Aiyuk as he goes through the negotiations?

“It’s a little bit frustrating,” Aiyuk acknowledged on The Pivot recently, “Especially when we’re getting down to details like that. Like, we’re putting down exact numbers in negotiation, where that’s talks between the team and my team. And we’re trying to work through things, work through a lot of things.”

“So, for actual numbers and actual stuff like that to come out, I felt it was a little bit disrespectful, a little bit unfair to me, but that’s part of it. That’s part of it. It is what it is.”

Aiyuk chalked up the tactic to the sheer nature of how negotiations go, which is why he chooses to go the social media route to gain some type of leverage.

“It’s a dirty game. It’s a dirty game. So I just feel like for me, social media is a way for myself to leverage me and my team, to leverage myself and to leverage what I’m trying to get, because that’s the way to get the message out there. That’s the way to get the facts out there. And the facts are the facts.”

Aiyuk is scheduled to play the 2024 season on the fifth-year option, which is worth $14.124 million, but the hope is that the two sides can hash out an extension by the start of the year, keeping the talented wideout in San Francisco for the foreseeable future.