Kyle Shanahan on voiding Brandon Aiyuk's guarantees: "Extremely unusual" situation
49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan confirmed a report that the team has voided the remaining guaranteed money on wide receiver Brandon Aiyuk's deal during his Saturday press conference.
Aiyuk had a guaranteed salary of $26.15 million for the 2026 season, but did not challenge the team's decision. Per the report from TheAthletic.com, Aiyuk, who has not played since Week 7 of last season due to a serious knee injury, "failed to attend meetings and declined to participate in other team activities in recent months.”
Shanahan said that players who are rehabbing often miss team activities because "their schedule is totally different than the rest of the team" while decling to specify exactly why the 49ers decided to take this step in July.
"I've been coaching over 20 years, and I've never been in a situation where a contract's been voided," Shanahan said, via 49ersWebzone.com. "So it was extremely unusual to me. . . . It takes a lot of things to get a contract voided. Honestly, I've never dealt with that in my career or been in any building that's had that. So it was unusual, but that's stuff that I can't get into right now."
Shanahan said that he still hopes Aiyuk can return this season and that the contract decision "doesn't have anything to do with the future" of Aiyuk with the 49ers, but it wouldn't come as a great surprise at this point if Aiyuk has already played his final snaps with the team.