Brandon Aiyuk split reps at wide receiver with Trent Sherfield and never had a pass thrown his way in the 49ers’ season opener, which has led to questions for head coach Kyle Shanahan about the 2020 first-round pick’s place on the team.
Some of those questions were asked during a Friday appearance on KNBR, including one about whether Aiyuk had fallen out of favor with the team in his second season.
“No. It’s not a doghouse. It’s just a pretty simple thing,” Shanahan said, via 49ers WebZone.com. “Trent Sherfield has played at a very high level every single day for the entire training camp. Aiyuk got off to a little bit of a slow start, and Trent was playing very well. Then when Aiyuk started to catch him, and, to me, was about to go by him, which was going to be the third preseason game, where I think you guys would have seen that, and he would have got that spot completely back, he tweaked his hamstring. And then he has about 10 days off, and his first practice was Wednesday before the Detroit game. So we planned on going into that completely rotating them and giving Trent the spot. One, because Aiyuk hadn’t played a lot of football coming off the injury, and two, because Trent Sherfield earned it. And it was nothing more than that.”
Shanahan said that he wants “Aiyuk to get that spot back,” but noted Sherfield isn’t going to make it easy for that to happen as the 49ers move toward their Week Two game in Philadelphia.