Are you tired of reading about San Francisco 49ers WR Brandon Aiyuk at this point? If you are, I can’t blame you. If, however, you would like to read about his new contract details after he signed a four-year, $120 contract extension on Friday, feel free to do so.
Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk is the first to get the full Aiyuk contract details and you can read them all right here. I will not recap every year but will highlight the details, all of which I have tabled up below.
For starters, Aiyuk received a $23 million signing bonus and a fully guaranteed base salary in 2024 of $1.125 million. This means that he’ll earn $24.125 million in 2024. Keep in mind that Aiyuk was previously scheduled to earn $14.124 million in 2024 as part of the fifth-year option that was picked up on his rookie contract. In short, Aiyuk will earn an additional $10.001 million more in 2024 than he previously was set to earn.
As Florio reports, Aiyuk has two option bonuses in his contract in 2025 and 2026 with amounts of $22.855 million and $24.935 million respectively. As Florio reports, $20.875 million of that $24.875 million that Aiyuk is scheduled to earn in 2025 is fully guaranteed at signing. This means that as far as full guarantees go, Aiyuk’s total out to $45 million. His full cash flow through 2025 is $49 million so he nearly got the first two years of his deal fully guaranteed. The remaining $4 million becomes fully guaranteed on April 1, 2025, per Florio.
Aiyuk’s contract extension includes workout bonuses of $100,000 in 2025, 2026, 2027, and 2028. He also has per-game roster bonuses he can earn in each of those years that total out at $750,000 in each.
That 2026 option bonus of $24.935 million is guaranteed for injury at signing and it becomes fully guaranteed as of April 1, 2025, per Florio.
If you look at Aiyuk’s cash flow throughout his extension, it’s mostly even overall. He’s even scheduled to earn $30 million in the final year of his deal, which is 2028. He’ll even earn an even $90 million through the third new year of his deal, which is 2027.
Using the double option bonus format will allow the 49ers to restructure Aiyuk’s contract along the way to help manage his annual salary cap charges. By the way, Aiyuk’s 2024 salary cap charge will now be just $5.725 million, down from $14.124 million. In short, those option bonuses will be treated like signing bonuses and then prorated out over the remaining years. That will help keep Aiyuk’s annual cap charges lower than what they are listed as in the table through 2026. The cap charges listed will balloon quite a bit in the final two years, however. There will likely be the use of two additional void years (2029 and 2023) to help accommodate the option bonus prorations.
As you can tell, Aiyuk’s new money average is $30 million, which ties him for fifth overall in wide receiving rankings in the NFL with Miami Dolphins WR Tyreek Hill, according to Over the Cap.
Now, could the Pittsburgh Steelers have done a similar deal like this? Well, first, I doubt they would have offered Aiyuk a new money average of $30 million. Probably the max would have been $29 million. The Steelers obviously could have matched the signing bonus and 2024 base salary. You don’t really see them utilize hefty double option bonuses like Aiyuk got and especially not for non-quarterbacks. The Steelers prefer to use lower roster bonuses in the second and sometimes third year on megadeals.
The fact that Aiyuk got nearly the first new year, 2025, fully guaranteed at signing would have been another precedent that the Steelers would have had to break. The Steelers are also not huge fans of per-game roster bonuses like those received by Aiyuk, which totals out at $3 million.
Had the Steelers ended up trading for Aiyuk, it really would have been interesting to see if the new deal would have included fully guaranteed money past 2024, which means just the initial base salary and the signing bonus. I really would have been surprised if they had done that.
To close out this post, several weeks ago I put together what I thought a contract might look like for Aiyuk if the Steelers ultimately traded for him. The example below has a new money average of $28 million and just $30.4 million guaranteed at signing.
While it’s all water under the Golden Gate Bridge at this point, and especially ever since Thursday night, I thought a few of you would like to see the details of the Aiyuk contract he received from the 49ers. Let me know if you have any questions and I will try to answer them. Thank you for reading.
