Brandon Aiyuk admits partial fault for contract standoff with 49ers

Now that he’s signed his four-year, $120 million contract extension, San Francisco 49ers receiver Brandon Aiyuk can laugh about the situation.

Although the 49ers and their fans didn’t appreciate the unnecessarily long drama-filled roller-coaster ride he took them on, it seems both Aiyuk and general manager John Lynch have left the hard feelings in the past and started fresh.

“I'm not going to lie — I made it a little more difficult than I needed to at the end,” Aiyuk said, via 95.7 The Game. “But [once we agreed to terms the hard feelings were forgotten]. For about the past month, we were pretty good.”

Aiyuk was close to being dealt several times during the offseason.

San Francisco had deals worked out with both the New England Patriots and Cleveland Browns for Aiyuk, but the 26-year-old wideout refused to sign contract extensions with both teams.

SI.com’s Albert Breer reveled on Monday that Patriots actually offered Aiyuk more money than the 49ers did — a four-year deal worth $32.4M annually — and he stated if Aiyuk was only after money like initially believed, he would’ve ended up in New England.

Per ESPN’s Nick Wagoner, Aiyuk admitted on Tuesday that he had to “get his mind right” about potentially playing for a team other than the 49ers, which ultimately led to him accepting SF’s final contract offer.

“Ultimately, I wanted to be here,” Aiyuk added.

Breer also mentioned Aiyuk rejected two previous 49ers contract offers — the four-year, $120M deal he ultimately ended up accepting and a three-year, $87M deal.