- 2 days ago
Another day, another discussion about whether or not Brandon Aiyuk makes sense - on OR off the field - for the Commanders!
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00:00So we wanted to get into the Commanders here.
00:02We have two bits of audio that we're going to play.
00:05We're going to start with Ian Rappaport, NFL reporter of Note.
00:10This is him on NFL Network talking about the Commanders wanting in on Brandon Ayuk.
00:17I mean, I think we'd all like to avoid some similar IG messaging from Brandon Ayuk.
00:23We'd rather this situation be settled rather than have this drag on through the summer.
00:26But that's the way I see this going on.
00:28First of all, here's what the San Francisco 49ers would like.
00:32They have his rights.
00:33He's not doing any guaranteed money because he forfeited that by not showing up to his rehab.
00:37So they would like to trade him probably to the Commanders with his old friend Jaden Daniels
00:42and an organization that obviously knows him well considering Adam Peters was in San Francisco and all of that.
00:48What the Commanders would like to do is sign him without having to trade him.
00:52So, Tom, we're in a situation where nobody wants to move at all.
00:56They're all staring at each other.
00:58There's really no deadline to make a move at all.
01:01So until and unless everyone gets tired of Brandon Ayuk sending Instagram messages,
01:06this is going to be a storyline that takes us through the summer.
01:09Yeah, I mean, I don't think the 49ers are in any rush to placate Brandon Ayuk.
01:13And I was listening to B. Mitch and Finley yesterday.
01:16JP made a great point.
01:17He's like, why would the Niners release him early, give him a chance to have an entire training camp with
01:22the Commanders?
01:23And they face the Commanders on Monday Night Football this season.
01:28It's a competitive advantage to let him go to go not just to the Commanders but to any team.
01:32Yeah, to any team but especially to an NFC team that you know you're competing against to try to make
01:37the postseason.
01:39And you have to play that team at some point during the season.
01:41If I'm the Niners, I'm just looking at the calendar.
01:45I'm saying, when is the last day we can release him and not have it mess up our salary cap
01:51and have no ramifications?
01:53Like, I don't care if he puts out a thousand Instagram messages.
01:58Who cares?
01:59Yeah, and if any other team came up with a trade and said, all right, we'll give you, if the
02:03Titans said, we'll give you a seventh rounder for it, boom.
02:06That's the trade they'll make.
02:07Yeah, I just, I don't know if any team's insane enough to trade for him and inherit, you'd have to
02:12pay him $28 million.
02:14I believe he's due in his upcoming deal.
02:16Like, nobody's going to do that.
02:18No, there's not one team on the planet that would trade for Brandon Ayuk and inherit his current salary.
02:24Yeah, it's just, it's crazy.
02:25And you're just kind of waiting for it to happen.
02:27Right.
02:27And eventually it will.
02:29But when is the question.
02:30But yeah, I mean, the Niners, they're not in any rush.
02:33I think they're going to wait until the last possible moment.
02:36Correct.
02:37That's what it appears.
02:38And if that's late August.
02:40The Niners, John Lynch and Kyle are going to wake up and be like, yeah, let's just, let's just get
02:45rid of Brandon Ayuk now instead of twisting the knife in him as long as we can.
02:51Yeah.
02:51Like, we've already gotten to this point.
02:53Why would they be in a rush to get rid of him now?
02:55That's why he's putting out all this stuff is he's trying to force their hand by just making him a
03:01topic.
03:02I'm sure that's part of it.
03:03Is he that calculated?
03:04It's probably part of his motivation.
03:06He's trying to let the fans know.
03:07Let's make them have to talk about me every day.
03:10He's trying to let the fans know, hey, this is on the 49ers.
03:14They're mistreating me.
03:15They should release me, but they won't.
03:17I think you nailed it, though, EB, when you called him weird.
03:20I think he's a weird dude.
03:21He's weird.
03:22Yeah.
03:23And I get it.
03:23There's a lot of people who are excited about the possibility.
03:27They think he might be the missing piece for them at wide receiver.
03:30Let me say this.
03:31They're romanticizing his play and what he's going to mean to Jaden Daniels.
03:36He's still weird.
03:37He's definitely a weird guy.
03:38That doesn't mean I wouldn't take him if he came out here and he showed me he still could play.
03:43I'm not saying, like, Cakes is like, I don't want anything to do with him.
03:46I respect that.
03:48I'll take him if he can play.
03:49That's what I said yesterday.
03:50If he comes out and runs routes and he shows he can still play.
03:54This dude is weird.
03:55My reticence is not so much the off-the-field stuff.
03:57My reticence is that he hasn't been on the field catching touchdowns since 2023.
04:03I think they also pointed out that when he did play, whenever he last did, that his catch rate went
04:08down.
04:09In 2024.
04:10Yeah.
04:10Some of those numbers, not only just with the targets and all that down, but his catching percentage was down.
04:16Because even if he was a model citizen and everybody said he's the best character guy in the NFL, if
04:24he sit out for a year and a half, you're probably not going to be the same player.
04:28Yeah.
04:28It's hard.
04:29It's hard.
04:30But if you have nothing, so he gets released or whatever and the contract expires, however all that works, and
04:35you're going to sign him to a nothing deal.
04:37I got no problem bringing him in.
04:38A small deal with a lot of incentives.
04:40And if the guy's a pain in the ass, you cut him.
04:42Right.
04:43If he's all of a sudden, he's like, it's all about Brendan Ayuk, which is going to be actually hard.
04:48Can you imagine if, let's just say, let's just accelerate the timetable.
04:51Let's just say here we are.
04:53It's late August.
04:54They release him.
04:55They sign him.
04:55So there will obviously be the first moment where he talks to the media.
05:00But they're going to probably be talking about him and updating him.
05:03There's going to be like a Brendan Ayuk update every day.
05:06Well, I feel like there's going to be that every day on this show until there's some sort of closure
05:13with Brendan Ayuk, whatever that might be, or whatever it looks like.
05:16All right, this next piece of audio, this is from Grant Cohn, who has covered the Niners, I believe, since
05:222011.
05:23He's like a beat reporter for the Niners out west.
05:25He joined Beamich and Finley yesterday.
05:28Here's what he had to say about the back and forth between the Niners and B.A.
05:34A lot of people have been speculating, like, is he like Antonio Brown?
05:37Does he have CTE?
05:39I think the answer is clearly no.
05:41He just seems like a guy who deeply, deeply and sincerely hates his employer, which is kind of relatable.
05:47I mean, I think at some point in everyone's life, they've worked somewhere they didn't or they absolutely hated the
05:53boss with the passion of the entire company.
05:55And this guy just has, like, $60, $70 million and can say so.
06:00And he can dictate where he wants to go next.
06:03He might have to sit out a couple of years.
06:05But it kind of feels like Carson Palmer 20 years later, and no one called Carson Palmer a crazy person
06:11because he didn't want to play for the Bengals anymore.
06:13I think people understood.
06:15But with the Niners, they have a different perception, a different reputation, although there are – he's not the first
06:21player who's left this team extremely disgruntled.
06:24So I'm kind of on his side.
06:26I think they clearly need to break up, and it's weird that the Niners just won't let the breakup happen.
06:33So he's basically saying that Brandon Ayuk has FU money, and he's agitating that he just wants out, and he
06:40hates his employer.
06:41Well, from the 49ers' perspective, they're just waiting for a possible trade partner.
06:47Right.
06:47They're not just going to release him.
06:49They don't have to release him yet.
06:50Yeah, but at what point are they going to acknowledge that no one is going to trade for him?
06:53Well, maybe they deep down behind closed doors, they know that.
06:56But publicly, they're saying, yeah, we're just waiting for a possible trade.
07:00We'd rather get something for him than just outright release him.
07:02They're going to exhaust any and every avenue to try to find a partner.
07:07And if they don't get a trade partner, well, eventually they'll release him.
07:09All right, we've got more from Grant Cohn.
07:11I mean, you could say it stems from the contract negotiation, but I think it went back way before then.
07:18The Niners have a very particular type of culture.
07:21It's a very frat boyish kind of Republican culture, to put it mildly.
07:26And Brandon's just not that kind of guy.
07:28He was put in a doghouse early in his career.
07:31It was never about his performance.
07:32He just didn't really fit in.
07:34He doesn't really bend the knee and talk the corporate talk and kiss butt the way you're supposed to with
07:41this team.
07:42And I think he always kind of paid the price.
07:44And when it was time to get paid, they lowballed him, and he took it personally.
07:47And then he got hurt, and then they tried to trade him when he was hurt.
07:50And then he just took the whole thing very personally, which is fair.
07:53And he's such a good player, I think he just decided, I don't want to play for you anymore.
08:00That's some good insight.
08:01It's funny, yesterday when we did our poll of the day after we heard the Brandon Iyuk Instagram video,
08:10where you had to kind of decode it, decipher what the heck is he really talking about.
08:16Initially, it was like 90-10, 90% not interested.
08:20By the end of the night, it was at about 33%.
08:24And I actually think it's more than that.
08:26There's a lot of Commanders fans that they don't care.
08:31I remember I even asked one guy.
08:32He was like, you guys on the radio keep talking about his character.
08:35He's fine.
08:36I said, okay, on a scale of 0 to 10, with 0 meaning you have absolutely no concern about his
08:43character,
08:44what would you give him?
08:46And the guy came back and said, 0.
08:48How could it be at 0?
08:50Well, this is where you've got to rely on the speeding thing to an extent.
08:55But there's the speeding thing.
08:57There's kind of some weird videos here.
08:59I haven't seen him working out.
09:00I'm not saying it's a 10.
09:01It's not a 10.
09:02I'm not as concerned about him as, let's say, a Dennis Rodman.
09:06And by the way, I brought up Rodman yesterday because the Bulls found a way to make it work with
09:10Dennis Rodman.
09:11But you do get some Antonio Brown vibes watching some of these videos from Brandon Ayuk.
09:18And the Antonio Brown thing went off the rails.
09:21A big part of my concern with Ayuk is if he hates his employers there in San Francisco,
09:26what's to say he won't hate the people here in Washington too?
09:29If things aren't going right.
09:31I mean, he could pull the same act here in Washington.
09:33With two things.
09:35But they're not going to sign him to a bunch of money, so it really wouldn't matter.
09:37Right, right.
09:38Yeah.
09:39They're not giving him $50 million or whatever.
09:42But this is where you have to truly rely on Jaden, who has, by all accounts, it seems like,
09:48kept in touch with him, considers him a brother for life.
09:51So you really got to lean into that.
09:54And then Adam Peters' own personal experience.
09:56And other people in the organization that were part of the 49ers when he was there.
10:00You know, if you're around a guy for a year or two, like, you know,
10:04if you asked me about Adam Epstein today, I mean, I don't really work with him anymore,
10:08but I got a pretty good sense of who he is as a person.
10:11Right?
10:12They worked with Brandon Ayuk a couple years ago.
10:16They think they have a pretty good sense of who he is.
10:19And I think it would speak for itself if they actually go after him when he becomes available.
10:24And by Ian Rappaport's reporting and others, that's exactly what they're going to do.
10:29Yeah, they don't seem phased.
10:30They seem like they're locked in on Brandon Ayuk whenever he's released.
10:35If I was one of Brandon Ayuk's people, and I don't know if he has it, but I assume he
10:40has some advisors,
10:40I would say, why don't we just, you want to get your message out there,
10:44why don't we just do a sit-down with somebody and, like, just have a normal conversation?
10:48Just do a sit-down with ESPN.
10:50Or a reporter you trust.
10:52Or a local guy.
10:53A local guy you trust.
10:54And let's just do, like, a normal thing and, you know, just try not to make it too wacky.
10:59Just try to be, like, you know.
11:01Yeah, just be honest.
11:02Just be honest.
11:02Be yourself.
11:03Not be yourself, but, you know, maybe polish it up a little bit.
11:06I wonder if, you know.
11:07Tell me what's frustrating you.
11:09Yeah, just what's going on.
11:10And, you know, like you would talk to someone that you respect.
11:14And this, instead of cryptic, weird stuff and, you know, weird, you know.
11:21His hand was without saying.
11:23Instagram posts.
11:24Don't call the 49ers a bunch of P-words like you referenced in the Instagram message.
11:29Well, is he being cryptic because it's cool to be cryptic,
11:33or could he still be punished if he's outspoken against the team?
11:37I assume it's just.
11:38Technically, he's still.
11:39He's still a 49er.
11:40Yeah, on the team.
11:41What could they do?
11:42I mean, they're not going to pay him.
11:43I don't know.
11:43They're not going to show up.
11:44I don't know either, Matt.
11:47But I would just ask, is it possible?
11:49Maybe it's not.
11:49Maybe he's just a different dude.
11:51Just an eccentric guy that we're interpreting as weird.
11:54He's just not wired that way where he can come out.
11:56Can you just have a sit-down?
11:57And be normal.
11:59I don't think he's capable of being normal.
12:01Like with like a counselor or like with a pastor.
12:03Can you just have like a sit-down?
12:05Like a normal sit-down?
12:06You know what?
12:06Scott Pelley's unemployed right now.
12:08Just have him do a sit-down with him.
12:10Just hang out together.
12:12Anybody.
12:12That's a journalist that needs a gig.
12:14Just sit.
12:14Going to interview Brandon Ayuk.
12:16Even if it was Stephen A. Smith.
12:19Like just sit down with somebody.
12:22But let's try to make it like a normal conversation so we can all kind of understand where you're going.
12:28Maybe that would help.
12:29By the way, isn't Stephen A. Smith like posing shirtless to show off his weight loss of late?
12:33Nobody needs to see that content.
12:36Nobody's asking for you to take your shirt off, Stephen A.
12:38I think he's taking his shirt off and isn't he like holding a basketball?
12:41Yeah, nobody's asking for that.
12:43He's reliving his hoop dreams.
12:43I don't want to see that on my Twitter timeline.
12:45Yeah.
12:46But I am.
12:46I haven't seen it.
12:47Yeah.
12:48Oh, I've seen it.
12:49I wish I could unsee it.
12:50Does he look good?
12:51I mean, he looks better than before.
12:52He looks way better than before.
12:54I mean, he has the body of like a...
12:56He looks like a guy from like Middle Earth.
12:58He looks like Craig.
13:00Remember how Craig had an all weird body, but Craig was kind of in shape.
13:03He's got a weird body.
13:04That's the best descriptor.
13:04Yeah, he's got kind of a weird body, but you know, he's lost weight and he's got some pecs.
13:08He's probably 60, right?
13:10Probably.
13:11He's got to be T, too.
13:13He's probably on some T.
13:15T and GLPs, ABCs, all the things.
13:18All the initials.
13:19All the things.
13:21But yeah, he looks good.
13:23But that would be my thing is, let's try to...
13:26And also, I would love to see a workout video.
13:29Like, why can't we just do a workout video?
13:30And most of those I laugh at.
13:31So we said yesterday.
13:32Most of those I laugh at.
13:33Yeah.
13:34But, you know, nobody's really seen you in a while.
13:36Let's go out there with somebody.
13:38Make the fans want you even more.
13:40Make the Commanders fans want you even more by posting out a video.
13:43But maybe he thinks if I do that, then the Niners are really not going to let me go.
13:49Yeah, but eventually they have to.
13:51Yeah, but maybe I can accelerate it if I don't look that attractive to other teams.
13:56I don't know.
13:56It's just such a bizarre spot that he's in.
13:59Because, look, if he shows...
14:00Let's say he does a workout video.
14:01He's got like, I don't know, Des Bryant working him out or something.
14:05Ocho Cinco or whatever.
14:06He's balling out.
14:07He's showing all the cuts and all the moves and everything.
14:10And then he looks like pristine, elite athlete available.
14:15That's not going to push the Niners to release him.
14:19Yeah.
14:20It's just so weird that players on teams in any sport that come out and say they don't want to
14:26play for them anymore,
14:28they're usually dealt or cut.
14:30They usually move on.
14:31They usually move on right away.
14:32But the Niners aren't doing it.
14:33Yeah.
14:34All right, we come back.
14:34We'll get back into the NBA Finals.
14:37The Knicks fall at home 115-111.
14:40They still lead the series, but are they clearly the better team in the series between the Knicks and the
14:46Spurs?
14:47We'll get into that next.
14:48We'll take your calls as well at 800-636-1067.
14:51We're the junks.
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