2024 49ers offseason

[757-NINER]

1 minute ago, adamq said:

If wr was so easy to find, what has New England been doing all these years? Kansas city last season? Carolina after moving Moore?

Neither NE nor Carolina have a pulse at the QB positon. That's the real issue, not the talent at WR.

KC's main issue was with drops midway through the season. But once they got into the playoffs, their young WRs started making plays.

In this scheme, I don't believe a great talent is needed, per say.

Does Shanny really need to paid a WR elite level money?

Once the QB riddle was solved with Purdy, WR talent became less of a concern for me personally.

I just feel like above average QB play can elevate your WRs.

Deebo got paid because of his versatility and the way we all thought the offense was headed with Lance as the QBOTF. But had they known theh would get CMC and Purdy would become the franchise guy, I highly doubt that deal happens. 

I think we need a certain skillset at the position, more so than pure God-given talent.

Of course we won't complain if we draft another BA, or luck into a J. Jefferson type of talent.

But I think the Shanny is ok with assembling certain pieces/skillsets at a fraction of the cost that can maximize what Purdy does well.

We have no problem paying guys considered among the Top 2-3 at their respective positions, see Trent, Kittle, CMC, Bosa, & Warner.

Not sure where BA stands in the WR hierarchy but can we really justify paying him 30 per??

 

[adamq]

10 minutes ago, 757-NINER said:

KC's main issue was with drops midway through the season. But once they got into the playoffs, their young WRs started making plays.

I don't think that's really true. Rice did well but everybody else struggled. I think MVS finally caught a ball or two and Hardman stabbed us in the heart, but otherwise they didn't do much. It's not like KC breezed past us, Baltimore, or Buffalo either

10 minutes ago, 757-NINER said:

Does Shanny really need to paid a WR elite level money?

For someone like BA or Deebo, I think he does. What did guys like Ray Ray or Bell really bring to the offense? JJ has his role but is a limited player.. I think taking Pearsall was a move to cover for injury now and to replace Deebo next season.. not to come out and take BAs job off the rip.

10 minutes ago, 757-NINER said:

Not sure where BA stands in the WR hierarchy but can we really justify paying him 30 per??

That's a good question, but without making a list I would put him in the top 15 at least. 30m seems high, I would want it to be more like 28m, but the cap will be rising significantly over the next 4 seasons anyway. The longer they wait, the more the price goes up. As we've seen this offseason

 

Edit- He easily belongs with or above Waddle/DSmith. I would slot him in right between Waddle/ARSB, he has no argument to be paid more than st brown

 

https://overthecap.com/position/wide-receiver

Edited June 25 by adamq

[WhyAmIHere]

2 hours ago, N4L said:

The phrasing is purposefully misleading

"BA walked in the room with JD, when announcing a meeting with SF..." makes it sound like JD walked into the niners facility today. 

JD accompanied BA to a podcast taping a few weeks ago, says Ryan clark, who also announced that BA is meeting with the 49ers today." This is significantly less ambiguous. I believe the original phrasing was ambiguous by design. 

I freaking hate the modern media. 

[y2lamanaki]

If Dante Pettis didn't exist, I might feel stronger about our ability to just plug and play whomever it is we'd select to replace Aiyuk. Instead, it proves Shanahan is mortal, and that maybe we shouldn't spend the season next year after giving Brock his massive extension testing the common theory that Brock is a product of his superior weapons. 

[JIllg]

1 hour ago, y2lamanaki said:

If Dante Pettis didn't exist, I might feel stronger about our ability to just plug and play whomever it is we'd select to replace Aiyuk. Instead, it proves Shanahan is mortal, and that maybe we shouldn't spend the season next year after giving Brock his massive extension testing the common theory that Brock is a product of his superior weapons. 

Agreed. And Aiyuk’s per target numbers last year WERE absolutely nuts. He had 1300+ yards with a fraction of the targets of the other top guys on the leaderboard if you like it simple. He was second in pff receiving grade due to a monster separation and catch point score. Brock completed 65%!!!! of his 20 plus yard down the field attempts last year, a massive outlier when other humans couldn’t break 55% over 15 years of tracking data. And Aiyuk’s ability to adjust and haul in difficult targets and superbly low drop rate we’re a major part of that outlier data point. Also, more than being a superb receiver, Aiyuk was also right up there with Jajaun Jennings as one of the best run blockers in the business by those who track that stuff. Last year Aiyuk was the sort of apex guy you can harness an offense on. I’m paying him the money and making him a cornerstone piece. Aiyuk is this team’s primary vertical threat among a lot of horizontal ones.

[Steve_DeBerg_Fan_420]

9 hours ago, JIllg said:

Agreed. And Aiyuk’s per target numbers last year WERE absolutely nuts. He had 1300+ yards with a fraction of the targets of the other top guys on the leaderboard if you like it simple. He was second in pff receiving grade due to a monster separation and catch point score. Brock completed 65%!!!! of his 20 plus yard down the field attempts last year, a massive outlier when other humans couldn’t break 55% over 15 years of tracking data. And Aiyuk’s ability to adjust and haul in difficult targets and superbly low drop rate we’re a major part of that outlier data point. Also, more than being a superb receiver, Aiyuk was also right up there with Jajaun Jennings as one of the best run blockers in the business by those who track that stuff. Last year Aiyuk was the sort of apex guy you can harness an offense on. I’m paying him the money and making him a cornerstone piece. Aiyuk is this team’s primary vertical threat among a lot of horizontal ones.

It's not about how Aiyuk compares to other wide receivers, it's how receiver salaries compare to everyone else. 

The salaries for Devonta Smith, Jaylen Waddle, etc are just absurd and over priced.  I'll take a top 1 OT and 10 million in cap space over a top 15 wide reviever. Trent makes about 22 million per year. 

He's important to the team, but his contract just doesn't seem to have a lot of value from a business perspective. 

[WhyAmIHere]

5 hours ago, Steve_DeBerg_Fan_420 said:

It's not about how Aiyuk compares to other wide receivers, it's how receiver salaries compare to everyone else. 

The salaries for Devonta Smith, Jaylen Waddle, etc are just absurd and over priced.  I'll take a top 1 OT and 10 million in cap space over a top 15 wide reviever. Trent makes about 22 million per year. 

He's important to the team, but his contract just doesn't seem to have a lot of value from a business perspective. 

This.  Aiyuk is great, but there are stacks of good receivers coming out every year in every draft.  Too many teams win SBs without great WR play, it's not a position you break your balls for. 

[y2lamanaki]

7 hours ago, WhyAmIHere said:

This.  Aiyuk is great, but there are stacks of good receivers coming out every year in every draft.  Too many teams win SBs without great WR play, it's not a position you break your balls for. 

Correction: Tom Brady and Patrick Mahomes win SBs without great WR play (mostly... I mean subtract Mike Evans and Tyreek Hill). The other teams had:

Cooper Kupp*, Robert Woods*, Odell Beckham Jr*, Demaryius Thomas*, Emmanuel Sanders*, Anquan Boldin*, Victor Cruz, Hakeem Nicks, Greg Jennings*, Marques Colton*, Hines Ward*, Santonio Holmes, Plaxico Burress*, Marvin Harrison*, and Reggie Wayne*

*Denotes a player not on their rookie/first contract

Brady/Mahomes skew the data a bit, because remove them and what you say is true for maybe the 2017 Eagles and 2013 Seahawks over the last two decades. Not all of those players above had great years, but they were all at the top of their games or already well-established/taking up a lot of cap space when they won. 

Edited June 26 by y2lamanaki
Autocorrect

[JIllg]

3 hours ago, y2lamanaki said:

Correction: Tom Brady and Patrick Mahomes win SBs without great WR play (mostly... I mean subtract Mike Evans and Tyreek Hill). The other teams had:

Cooper Kupp*, Robert Woods*, Odell Beckham Jr*, Demaryius Thomas*, Emmanuel Sanders*, Anquan Boldin*, Victor Cruz, Hakeem Nicks, Greg Jennings*, Marques Colton*, Hines Ward*, Santonio Holmes, Plaxico Burress*, Marvin Harrison*, and Reggie Wayne*

*Denotes a player not on their rookie/first contract

Brady/Mahomes skew the data a bit, because remove them and what you say is true for maybe the 2017 Eagles and 2013 Seahawks over the last two decades. Not all of those players above had great years, but they were all at the top of their games or already well-established/taking up a lot of cap space when they won. 

The financial argument against wide receivers is a more salient argument for me than the one that Aiyuk isn't as good as the money. 

In rebuttal, top wide receivers (along with scheme) can be single-handedly responsible for raising the floor and ceiling of your offense, both anecdotally and through various WAR calculations. You ask math people and they'll tell you that the top guys at wide receiver are the second most valuable position in a sport that is dominated by offense.

The Miami Dolphins are a competitive football team because of Tyreek Hill and McDaniel. You can tell a similar story with Ja'Marr Chase and the Bengals - that one pick improved their offense by leaps and bounds statistically. 

Patrick Mahomes had 8.8 YPA (top, top stuff for almost all non-Shanahan QBs) with Hill down to 7.0!!!! this year without him. That 7.0 number is below starting QB average. With Patrick Freaking Mahomes!!! Their offense was a roughly average unit in terms of DVOA and points scored. With Patrick Freaking Mahomes!!! And they tried to do the bottom of the first round into second round drafting + supplementing it with cheap veterans thing. And they had Travis Kelce (albeit aging this year). In spite of this, their offense should have been basically impossible to win a Super Bowl with. It took a mangled AFC, a bed-wetting by the Ravens, and our getting beat up at the wrong time for them to get there. 

I think that you can nickel and dime your way into your supplementary playmakers - your run after the catch guy, your separator out of the slot, whatever, but you do not nickel and dime your way around the primary playmaker that attracts deep defensive attention. Those are too rare and too valuable. Just look at what Mahomes and Brady did when they actually had those dudes. 

So yeah. For me, the guys that you absolutely need to pay are your QB, your prime receiver that draws deep attention, your disruptive pass rusher and then you can allocate the rest of the resources as works for your asset pool. We're within eyeshot of setting that down for the next half-decade. I, personally, would just get it over the line. We can make a productive offense without Aiyuk and with Shanny and some pieces. But we won't be likely to be the top, top offense that we were last year and can continue being in the future without him.

Shanahan helps a lot in this regard, but I think you very much risk turning Brock Purdy back into Jimmy G (it did worse to Mahomes!) if you switch out Aiyuk. And then you'd be paying Purdy legit money while providing him with support in the wrong areas, imo. 

Edited June 26 by JIllg

[NcFinest9erFan]

The San Francisco #49ers and wide receiver Brandon Aiyuk reportedly had a "good meeting" as the two sides remain at an standstill in contract negotiations.

@TomPelissero

of NFL Network reported both sides "said things that needed to be said," and there are no plans for a trade at this time.

[Steve_DeBerg_Fan_420]

8 hours ago, y2lamanaki said:

Correction: Tom Brady and Patrick Mahomes win SBs without great WR play (mostly... I mean subtract Mike Evans and Tyreek Hill). The other teams had:

Cooper Kupp*, Robert Woods*, Odell Beckham Jr*, Demaryius Thomas*, Emmanuel Sanders*, Anquan Boldin*, Victor Cruz, Hakeem Nicks, Greg Jennings*, Marques Colton*, Hines Ward*, Santonio Holmes, Plaxico Burress*, Marvin Harrison*, and Reggie Wayne*

*Denotes a player not on their rookie/first contract

Brady/Mahomes skew the data a bit, because remove them and what you say is true for maybe the 2017 Eagles and 2013 Seahawks over the last two decades. Not all of those players above had great years, but they were all at the top of their games or already well-established/taking up a lot of cap space when they won. 

All of those WR's, aside from Kupp, Harrison, Wayne, and Boldin were over paid at one or more points throughout their career. 

We have Deebo and we pay him a lot of money.  We use Kittle in the passing game, and we pay him a lot of Money.  We use CMC in the passing game and we pay him a lot of money.  We have Trent Williams, and we use him on every play, and we pay him a lot of money.  We are going to need to pay Purdy a lot of money.   We want to pay Aiyuk more than any of the skill guys by about 8 million bucks.  

The guys who cover these players make half as much money, and can have just as much of an impact on the game.  It's just a lot of money for a very good, but maybe not great player.  We talk about Purdy not having an elite cast of weapons, but what if Aiyuk's contract prevents Purdy from being protected on his blind side?  Why is it Purdy and not Aiyuk that is the product of the people around him?

I know it's not my money, but there is a limit to spending, and I am not sure which weapons we let go to keep Aiyuk.  

You mention Pettis, but since Pettis we have drafted Deebo, Aiyuk, Jennings, and (undrafted) Bourne, and the two guys this year.  Sure Pettis and Gray were misses, but most draft picks are misses.  The team can't pay premium prices for positions because the team missed a pick eight years ago. 

 

Edited June 26 by Steve_DeBerg_Fan_420

[y2lamanaki]

10 minutes ago, Steve_DeBerg_Fan_420 said:

but most draft picks are misses.

Boom. My point.

[Steve_DeBerg_Fan_420]

6 minutes ago, y2lamanaki said:

Boom. My point.

Neat.  

Your post says that a team won the superbowl because they paid a big contract to Hakeem Nicks.  I disagree with that stance.  

Edited June 26 by Steve_DeBerg_Fan_420

[Steve_DeBerg_Fan_420]

5 hours ago, JIllg said:

The financial argument against wide receivers is a more salient argument for me than the one that Aiyuk isn't as good as the money. 

In rebuttal, top wide receivers (along with scheme) can be single-handedly responsible for raising the floor and ceiling of your offense, both anecdotally and through various WAR calculations. You ask math people and they'll tell you that the top guys at wide receiver are the second most valuable position in a sport that is dominated by offense.

The Miami Dolphins are a competitive football team because of Tyreek Hill and McDaniel. You can tell a similar story with Ja'Marr Chase and the Bengals - that one pick improved their offense by leaps and bounds statistically. 

Patrick Mahomes had 8.8 YPA (top, top stuff for almost all non-Shanahan QBs) with Hill down to 7.0!!!! this year without him. That 7.0 number is below starting QB average. With Patrick Freaking Mahomes!!! Their offense was a roughly average unit in terms of DVOA and points scored. With Patrick Freaking Mahomes!!! And they tried to do the bottom of the first round into second round drafting + supplementing it with cheap veterans thing. And they had Travis Kelce (albeit aging this year). In spite of this, their offense should have been basically impossible to win a Super Bowl with. It took a mangled AFC, a bed-wetting by the Ravens, and our getting beat up at the wrong time for them to get there. 

I think that you can nickel and dime your way into your supplementary playmakers - your run after the catch guy, your separator out of the slot, whatever, but you do not nickel and dime your way around the primary playmaker that attracts deep defensive attention. Those are too rare and too valuable. Just look at what Mahomes and Brady did when they actually had those dudes. 

So yeah. For me, the guys that you absolutely need to pay are your QB, your prime receiver that draws deep attention, your disruptive pass rusher and then you can allocate the rest of the resources as works for your asset pool. We're within eyeshot of setting that down for the next half-decade. I, personally, would just get it over the line. We can make a productive offense without Aiyuk and with Shanny and some pieces. But we won't be likely to be the top, top offense that we were last year and can continue being in the future without him.

Shanahan helps a lot in this regard, but I think you very much risk turning Brock Purdy back into Jimmy G (it did worse to Mahomes!) if you switch out Aiyuk. And then you'd be paying Purdy legit money while providing him with support in the wrong areas, imo. 

There are a lot of good points here.  I would add LT to the list of positions up there that need to have a prime talent.  

Although I feel your points are valid, I am not sure if the playmaking 1WR is as rare as it once was.  The spread offense has gotten these guys a lot of reps from a young age.  I also worry that the  10th through 20th guys are receiving the Jay Cutler/Sam Bradford treatment.  Average starters who receive premium pay due to positional value.  Aiyuk is a really good player, but he is also surrounded by other guys that draw a lot of attention.  Would he be as productive when he is surrounded by draft guys rather than tested vets?

I think that signing Aiyuk to a long term deal likely means that there will be a rebuild.  Aiyuk, Purdy, and Bosa would make up about 40% of the salary cap.  The team could very well be built the way you describe, but it would involve letting go a lot of our favorite players.  Deebo, Trent, Juice, CMC, and Kittle can't last forever though.  The new strategy would likely involve adding a lot of young guys, then paying the most productive ones.  Carry over cap space for a couple of years to make another run once the new assets are stacked together. 

 

I am not sure if we can string it out and replace the unicorns one guy at a time.  The coffers are getting pretty low. 

Edited June 26 by Steve_DeBerg_Fan_420

[y2lamanaki]

12 minutes ago, Steve_DeBerg_Fan_420 said:

All of those WR's, aside from Kupp, Harrison, Wayne, and Boldin were over paid at one or more points throughout their career. 

We have Deebo and we pay him a lot of money.  We use Kittle in the passing game, and we pay him a lot of Money.  We use CMC in the passing game and we pay him a lot of money.  We have Trent Williams, and we use him on every play, and we pay him a lot of money.  We are going to need to pay Purdy a lot of money.   We want to pay Aiyuk more than any of the skill guys by about 8 million bucks.  

The guys who cover these players make half as much money, and can have just as much of an impact on the game.  It's just a lot of money for a very good, but maybe not great player.  We talk about Purdy not having an elite cast of weapons, but what if Aiyuk's contract prevents Purdy from being protected on his blind side?  Why is it Purdy and not Aiyuk that is the product of the people around him?

I know it's not my money, but there is a limit to spending, and I am not sure which weapons we let go to keep Aiyuk.  

You mention Pettis, but since Pettis we have drafted Deebo, Aiyuk, Jennings, and (undrafted) Bourne, and the two guys this year.  Sure Pettis and Gray were misses, but most draft picks are misses.  The team can't pay premium prices for positions because the team missed a pick eight years ago. 

 

I chose Dante Pettis (6 years ago) as a specific example because he's a player we needed to plug in and play immediately - as we would potentially need to do with an Aiyuk replacement. And I adore Jennings, but the guy hasn't broken 450 yards in a season and is already on contract two. We've developed Aiyuk and Deebo into starting WRs and nobody else. Nobody else is even close. 

I didn't mention Danny Gray because he was a third round pick not intended to start (which is what I was exploring), but both he and Jalen Hurd could certainly be added to the equation for very different reasons, neither reason applying to Brandon Aiyuk, who has shown to have the greatest ability of them all - availability. But - it COULD apply to his replacement. 

Plus - top defenders are in the draft every year if all you need to do is replace a guy on paper. Look at 2020. Javon Kinlaw was in the draft, so we replaced Buckner rather than give him that exorbitant contract. Money saved equalled money earned. 

And those guys all being overpaid at some point means what to me? The argument was that the championship teams didn't have them, and factually all of those players have rings. In addition - every Super Bowl winning team in history has overpaid for a player. Big deal. It's irrelevant to what a team needs to succeed. Guys end up overpaid sometimes. Sounds like Jed's problem more than ours. 

Why is it Purdy and not Aiyuk seen that way? Lazy evaluations of both. But Aiyuk was already productive before Purdy. Certainly at least as productive as Deebo has been outside of a contract year. So it would be much harder to imagine Aiyuk falling off without Purdy rather than the other way around.

The guys covering the WRs making half as much as the WRs is the going rate of player positions. You know who makes even more than the WRs? QBs. Shanahan got to the Super Bowl with Jimmy Garoppolo, so why are you so ready to jettison the less expensive player (Aiyuk) rather than the one who might take up twice his cap space (Purdy)? 

If your argument boils down to "Shanahan's scheme is capable of replacing a WR," "the contract is much higher than the other skill positions," and "great players are available in all drafts" - and as Shanahan has proven he can win quite a lot with a lesser QB than Purdy, why not save all that extra money by not paying Purdy? Then we could pay Ward, Lenoir, Greenlaw, and Hufanga with all that extra cap space. Dobbs is an obviously intelligent QB - why not let him learn the system this year and hand him one of the cheapest starting QB contracts in the league and the keys to the most stacked roster in the league?

It's not an honest question because the answer is the same for both players. You don't and generally can't "just replace" top-level players because guys are "always available" and Shanahan could make it work. Pay the important players, and the #1 WR is an important player. And continuing rewarding your top guys is a great way to continue to build long-term success anyway. 

And I love Deebo as well, but I'm not saving a few bucks on an ever-rising salary cap to keep the guy who's going to miss 2-3 games/year and whose production can fluctuate so much from year to year over the more consistent player in both respects. So if it comes down to one or the other, it should still be an easy choice.