Brandon Aiyuk is (reportedly) in the building. After sitting out of mandatory minicamp and eating north of $100,000 in fines, the All-Pro wide receiver has reported to the team's facility in Santa Clara, according to NFL Network's Ian Rapoport.
Aiyuk's limited leverage
It’s a move that makes plenty of sense for a player with limited leverage in his negotiations, and who is currently slated to play on a fifth-year option worth $14.1 million.
Reporting to camp allows Aiyuk to work out and remain in the building with the 49ers while preventing fines from accruing. Nick Bosa held out through the first preseason game, but is the lynchpin of the San Francisco defense.
With the abundance of weapons and Ricky Pearsall (who is starting on the non-football injury list, but should return to practice shortly), Aiyuk doesn’t have that same leverage.
Pearsall is key in all of this. The rookie wide receiver looked like the polished prospect he was billed as in organized team activities (OTAs) but suffered a hamstring injury away from the facility. He'll start camp on the non-football injury list and will miss at least the first block of four practices.
Lynch said that he would leave the decision on when Pearsall returns up to the new co-heads of the training staff in Dustin Little and Dustin Perry. Their exact titles are yet to be announced, but they take over after the departure of former head of player health and performance Ben Peterson to the Atlanta Hawks.
If Pearsall's injury lingers, or he returns and looks underwhelming, it's reasonable to imagine that might make the 49ers sweat their hand bit more. Either way, there is no question Aiyuk is the best pure receiver on the roster and that he is a crucial piece to their championship aspirations.
Lynch on where it goes from here
The move to hold-in for Aiyuk allows him to ensure that he'll avoid fines that accrue for missing camp and preseason games. The 49ers would have had no reason to forgive the fines that accrued if the two sides failed to consummate a deal. That points to a potential concern on Aiyuk's side that a deal might not get done.
From here, the question is how long the hold-in lasts. Lynch said that the 49ers expect all their players to practice. He left the door open when he was asked about possibly trading him, and how he shut the door on trading Nick Bosa through his holdout last summer.
“No absolutes there," Lynch said. "We fully intend on Brandon being a Niner moving forward. We're always open to listen to things. But we expect Brandon to be an integral part of our team like he has been and excited about that.”
It would, of course, make no sense whatsoever for the 49ers to trade Aiyuk unless they were acquiring another player of his caliber. The logistics and sense of doing a deal for a similar wide receiver would make little sense for any prospective partner.
As it stands, Aiyuk will make things uncomfortable from the inside. How long will the hold-in last? Will a deal get done? Time will soon tell, but the 49ers' track record of getting deals done late (and perhaps too late) in the summer is well known (see: Nick Bosa's September signing, Deebo Samuel and Robbie Gould's trade requests, and late-summer signings of Fred Warner and George Kittle.)
Now, it's a matter of who blinks first. How the offense looks with or without Pearsall may help decide that.