Niners Nation
San Francisco 49ers general manager John Lynch was asked whether he had a realistic belief that Brandon Aiyuk would play for the team this season:
Realistic? I’m not sure. Hopeful? Yeah. That’s kind of where I’ll leave that. He continues to rehab. Hopefully, like I’ve always said, we’re a better football team when Brandon’s out there. I hope that’s the case. I think that’s probably what it is, is hope right now. I wish it were a little bit more than that.
That does not sound like a front-office member expecting the return of one of the best players on the roster.
The follow-up to Lynch was how he’s processing whether Aiyuk’s decisions damaged the locker room, and how the team is compartmentalizing it:
No. 1, we’re focusing on the guys that are out here. Because they’re a tremendous group, and they’re all about the team and all that. So when you have a situation like this, from the negotiation, all the way through, and then you get that fixed, he had a really tough injury.
So, what I try to do in all these situations is look inward. What could I have done better? What could we have done better? The great thing with this is it’s not over. We can take that. We can hopefully move forward, but that’s what you do. You look inward and say, Where can we be better? We try to implement that moving forward so we get everybody on the same page, and we’re all pulling in the same direction.
We’re hopeful Brandon is a part of us. We’re hoping Brandon is back with us and we’re moving forward with him as one of our core players.
Lynch doesn’t believe the recent reports about the team voiding Aiyuk’s contracts were an inflection point for the relationship, but acknowledged things “haven’t been great.”
There’s no doubt the 49ers can use Aiyuk’s skill set. It’s rather telling that Kyle Shanahan is using Jauan Jennings and not Ricky Pearsall as the “X” wide receiver in isolated situations. On one third down early in Week 13, Kendrick Bourne was the “X,” and that’s who the team threw a back-shoulder fade to. That’s right, the same Kendrick Bourne that wasn’t on the roster to begin the regular season.
Pearsall has yet to get going since returning from injury. Jennings has been productive, but he’s never been the type of receiver to stretch the field or make the big play. As we saw in 2023, that’s Aiyuk.
Over the past month, the passing game has funneled through George Kittle, who leads the team with 20 targets. Jennings has 19, but eight of those targets have been contested, compared to just one contested target for Kittle.
We’ve seen what the top-tier cornerbacks, like Jaycee Horn, can do to Jennings. In the playoffs, the 49ers will need a natural separator like Aiyuk. Unfortunately, unless something changes between now and then, it does not sound like...
