The San Francisco 49ers had quite an impressive season last year, finding a way to 13 wins despite dealing with a number of injuries once again. Stars like Fred Warner, Nick Bosa, George Kittle, and others dealt with long-term injuries, forcing a number of first and second-year players to step up into bigger roles.<\/p>\n
But there were some positions that were clearly impacted. Defensively, the 49ers did not get enough pressure on the quarterback, ranking 32nd in sacks, which was a huge issue in getting consistency on that side of the ball.<\/p>\n
Offensively, the 49ers saw struggles at wide receiver, as they couldn\u2019t get much production out of a group that included Ricky Pearsall, Kendrick Bourne, Demarcus Robinson, and others as their lead receivers. San Francisco was expected to have Brandon Aiyuk back midseason after his recovery from a torn ACL and MCL, but a dispute between him and the team led to his guarantees being voided and his departure.<\/p>\n
The Aiyuk situation was an unheralded one, as the wideout had just signed a four-year, $120 million extension one year prior, and his teammates were left in an unknown situation.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was kind of at training camp, kind of not,\u201d Kittle said on the Bussin\u2019 with the Boys this week, via CBS Sports. \u201cThen he was in and out of the building throughout those first couple of weeks. I\u2019d sort of go out to see him in the weight room because he didn\u2019t go into the locker room and training room anymore. He would just go to the weight room to do his rehab.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d just go out there and talk to him because he didn\u2019t go to meetings or anything like that. I would just talk to him like, \u2018Hey, I\u2019m your guy. Just letting you know I love you.\u2019 I started doing that, call it Week 6. I don\u2019t really know what week it was. And then literally a week later that story came out, like all the crazy stuff. And then I didn\u2019t see him again.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s not something I bring up to John Lynch and Kyle Shanahan very often. That\u2019s on you guys, and I just try to be there for the players if there\u2019s something going on. You always want to be there for the boys. I don\u2019t know what\u2019s going on with Brandon. I don\u2019t know what he\u2019s thinking. I really have no idea.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lynch confirmed that the 49ers will be moving off Aiyuk this season after voiding his guarantees, and San Francisco quickly looked to upgrade the position by adding Mike Evans and Christian Kirk this offseason.<\/p>\n
But, that was still quite the situation for the locker room to deal with in real time, making it even more impressive that the team rallied to 13 wins last season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The San Francisco 49ers had quite an impressive season last year, finding a way to 13 wins despite…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":612441,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[7,6,52067,1137],"class_list":{"0":"post-822085","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-nfl","10":"tag-san-francisco-49ers-roster","11":"tag-san-francisco-49ers-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116258526346466463","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/822085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=822085"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/822085\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/612441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=822085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=822085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=822085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}