San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Brandon Aiyuk suddenly faces far less target competition with the departure of Deebo Samuel Sr. Unfortunately, Aiyuk isn’t fully healthy, returning from a midseason ACL tear. Should fantasy football managers take the injury discount on the 49ers WR1?
Should You Draft Brandon Aiyuk in Fantasy?
The most difficult players to properly value in fantasy are injured stars. Typically, a player goes in a specific round because he is the caliber of player that belongs in that wrong.
Aiyuk is obviously not the WR47, and no fantasy manager would tell you they expect him to perform like a low WR4. But he’s coming off a torn ACL and is very likely to miss at least the first month of the season, if not more.
Two short years ago, Aiyuk averaged 15.6 fantasy points per game, finishing as the WR16. Last year was cut short by injury.
It is worth noting that Aiyuk was really struggling before getting hurt, though. He averaged 8.9 PPG in seven games. Only his 22.7-point Week 5 performance against the Cardinals was worth anything for fantasy managers. Every other week, he was in the single digits.
Aiyuk has never been an elite target share guy. He was 24.2% last year, a drop of just 0.8% from his career 2023 season. It’s impossible to point to any one reason his production dipped, but we can try.
Aiyuk’s targets per route run rate decreased from 24.9% to 22.7%. But most importantly, something weird happened with his aDOT and catchable targets.
Conventional wisdom would suggest that the closer to the line of scrimmage a player is being targeted, the easier the pass is to catch. For Aiyuk, it was the opposite.
Aiyuk had a 13.8 aDOT with a 74.3% catchable target rate in 2023. Despite his aDOT dropping to 11.8 in 2024, his catchable target rate plummeted to 59.6%. He caught just 53.2% of his passes before he was lost for the season.
The good news is that nothing suggests Aiyuk’s talent isn’t still there. He may be coming off a serious injury, but he’s still only 27 years old. Once healthy, he should be able to produce somewhere between his 2023 and 2024 seasons.
Brandon Aiyuk was pretty special in 2023.
It is hard to see Aiyuk returning to form after immediately tearing his ACL and MCL. The question is how long it will take for Aiyuk to play like himself again. pic.twitter.com/uwa5pzphrX
— Mike Urtaza (@urtazablue) June 3, 2025
One issue Aiyuk will encounter is that this offense runs through Christian McCaffrey. Yet, even in a season when McCaffrey missed all but four games, the game plan didn’t change. The 49ers want to play slow as molasses, control the clock, and run the ball.
Over the past two seasons, no team has run plays at a slower pace than the 49ers’ 30.5 seconds per snap. The fact that the next slowest team, the Titans, are nearly a full second faster than the 49ers (29.6) is outrageous.
San Francisco also has a 46% neutral game script run rate over the past two seasons. That’s good for eighth in the league. As a result, Purdy averaged 27.75 pass attempts per game in 2023 and 30.3 per game in 2024.
There is reason for optimism in 2025, though. The 49ers aren’t as good as they used to be. Therefore, they may be unable to dominate games, resulting in more passing. We saw a glimpse of that last year, as Purdy’s attempts per game ticked up by 2.5.
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Samuel is now in Washington, though. During his entire time in San Francisco, Aiyuk has averaged 12.7 PPG in 55 games with Samuel against 14.5 PPG in 14 games without him. Unsurprisingly, his volume is greater without the target competition.
Once Aiyuk returns, it will likely take him a few weeks to get back to some version of himself. I have Aiyuk ranked as my WR52, which is the point at which I’m willing to take a risk on him. I am not particularly keen on drafting injured players. But if Aiyuk falls below ADP, he is a worthwhile second-half play who could be a WR2 when it matters most.
Dan Fornek’s Brandon Aiyuk Fantasy Projection
2024 was a disaster for Brandon Aiyuk, especially after the jump. The veteran receiver missed most of training camp to secure a new contract or a trade. Eventually, Aiyuk did receive a contract from the 49ers, but was forced to try and get up to speed quickly for the regular season.
The result was an underwhelming start while the veteran receiver got into shape. Aiyuk caught just 25 of 47 targets for 374 yards in his first seven games. He had just one game with double-digit fantasy points in that sample size before tearing his ACL and MCL in Week 7, ending his season early. The result was a career-low 8.9 PPR points per game and a WR60 fantasy finish.
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There should be a lot of optimism about Aiyuk’s role heading into 2025 now that Deebo Samuel is no longer with the 49ers, but instead, there are questions about when he will return to the field. According to the team, there is a chance he will be ready for Week 1, but there is also a chance he could land on the PUP list and miss the first four weeks of the season.
Aiyuk’s talent is undeniable, and there are plenty of open targets with the 49ers. However, it is difficult to know exactly how many games he will miss and how much time he will take to return to full strength. The 49ers have enough in the passing attack (Christian McCaffrey, George Kittle, and Ricky Pearsall) to bring him along slowly, making him dangerous to trust in fantasy in 2025.
