George Kittle Gives His View On How 49ers’ Relationship With Brandon Aiyuk Soured

George Kittle doesn’t know what’s going on with Brandon Aiyuk, either.

The 49ers All-Pro tight end detailed the tight relationship he had with the team’s troubled receiver in a recent appearance on the “Bussin’ With The Boys” podcast.

But even Kittle hasn’t seen Aiyuk since he stopped showing up to the team facilities midway through last season. 

“I don’t know what’s going on with Brandon,” Kittle said. “I don’t know what he’s thinking about or what he’s thinking. I really have no idea.”

The two shared a receiver room in San Francisco for the past four seasons. They stayed in touch during Aiyuk’s contentious contract negotiation two summers ago.

Kittle continued to support Aiyuk even after the receiver stopped showing up in the Niners’ locker room last season.

“He was in and out of the building throughout those first couple weeks,” Kittle said. “I started going out to see him in the weight room because he didn’t go into the locker room or the training room anymore. He would just go into the weight room to do his rehab.”

The relationship soured between Aiyuk and 49ers management to the point that coach Kyle Shanahan said in December that he hadn’t seen Aiyuk in “months.”

Kittle said he didn’t raise the topic “very often” with Shanhan or general manager John Lynch (“That’s on you guys,” he said of them), but that didn’t stop him from supporting someone who was still his teammate.

“I’d just go out there to talk to him because he didn’t go to meetings or anything like that. I just talked to him like, ‘Hey, I’m your guy.’ Just let him know I love ya,” Kittle said.

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“I just try to be there for the players if there’s something going on. Because you always want to be there for the boys.”

But then Aiyuk wasn’t there, at all.

According to Kittle, Aiyuk’s disappearance — and subsequent off-the-field incidents, such as speeding his car at more than 90 mph past Levi’s Stadium — followed quickly after The Athletic broke the news in late November that the 49ers planned to void the $27 million in guaranteed money that remained on the four-year, $120 million extension he signed before the 2024 season.

The story cited team sources who said Aiyuk had failed to follow the rehab protocols for the torn ACL he suffered weeks after signing the contract.

“That story came out, like all the crazy stuff, and then I didn’t see him again,” Kittle said. “We’ve played together for four years now. I love you. I love playing football with you. How can I help? Literally two days later the article comes out and I don’t see him again.”

Kittle, now in the early stages of his own rehab process, did have one more correspondence with Aiyuk. He said the receiver reached out after Kittle tore his Achilles in their wild-card win over the Eagles.

“Said thinking of you. I said thanks dude,” Kittle recalled before reiterating that he hasn’t heard from him since. “ I haven’t really talked to him. So I don’t know. No clue.”