Brandon Aiyuk is gone. What’s next for the 49ers at wide receiver? How about some speed?

SANTA CLARA, Calif. — The San Francisco 49ers need speed at wide receiver.

Coach Kyle Shanahan acknowledged Wednesday that it was missing from his passing attack in 2025, a season in which the team’s top deep threat, Brandon Aiyuk, went AWOL and the next-best option, Ricky Pearsall, dealt with a knee injury from Week 4 onward.

“We were noticeably slower this year than we have been in years past,” Shanahan said at the team’s end-of-season news conference. “Sometimes that’s substituted for a better football player. That doesn’t mean you’re always worse because of that. But you definitely need more speed out there to handle things week in and week out for some of the situations that come up versus certain schemes and certain defenses.”

Neither Shanahan nor general manager John Lynch minced words about Aiyuk, whom the 49ers placed on the reserve/left squad list last month after he stopped going into the team facility to rehabilitate his 2024 ACL injury. Lynch said a roster move was forthcoming, adding, “I think it’s safe to say that he has played his last snap with the Niners.”

Asked if he could shed more light on how the relationship with the receiver, who had just signed a four-year, $120 million extension a year earlier, became so estranged, Lynch said, “I wish I knew. I can’t help you there. Sorry.”

Shanahan said Aiyuk stopped fielding phone calls, including a number of attempts from Shanahan.

“It’s something I’ve never seen in 22 years of coaching,” he said. “So it’s unfortunate, and it’s confusing.”

His departure will leave the 49ers with six receivers signed for the upcoming season: Pearsall, Demarcus Robinson, Jacob Cowing, Jordan Watkins, Malik Turner and Junior Bergen. It also gives the Niners some extra cash after they voided Aiyuk’s future guarantees.

The 49ers might use some of those savings on Jauan Jennings, who led the team with nine receiving touchdowns in 2025 and is scheduled for free agency. The two sides failed to hash out a long-term deal in the summer, with Jennings instead agreeing to a reworked one-year deal. Still, Lynch said the team would try to rekindle those discussions this offseason.

“He dealt with a lot of injuries throughout the course of the year, but Jauan always plays with a passion,” Lynch said. “We can always count on Jauan. We can move him around. He blocks, he does the little things. You can see by the way the other players respond that he plays the right way, and I think it frustrates other people. He makes us better. We’d love to have him back. We’ll go to work to try to get that accomplished, and we’ll see where that goes.”

While Jennings’ return would bolster the 2026 receiving unit, he wouldn’t solve San Francisco’s speed issue. According to Next Gen Stats, the 49ers’ fastest ball carrier in 2025 was a linebacker, Dee Winters, who reached 20.15 mph on his pick six in Indianapolis in Week 16. No 49ers wideout or running back cracked 20 mph, with Robinson coming the closest at 19.66 mph in Week 13.

Jennings’ 643 receiving yards led the 49ers’ wideouts, but it was the most modest team high for a Shanahan-coached wide receiver since Kendrick Bourne had 487 yards in 2018.

The 49ers have speed on the roster. Cowing and Watkins both ran sub-4.4-second 40-yard dashes before their respective drafts, and Pearsall clocked 4.41 seconds before his. But none could stay on the field in 2025. Cowing suffered a hamstring strain in the opening practice of training camp, then aggravated the injury multiple times while rehabilitating. He said he finally got on top of it by the end of the season and is entering the offseason healthy.

Watkins, a rookie, was off to a good start before suffering a high-ankle sprain in the preseason opener.

“If there were a couple more injuries for these receivers in the last month or so, then Jordan would’ve been up,” Shanahan said. “It wasn’t that he wasn’t capable — it’s that he missed his window to pass some people (on the depth chart).”

Then there’s Pearsall. He was averaging nearly 17 yards per catch before his PCL injury against the Jacksonville Jaguars in Week 4. He returned in Week 11 but aggravated the knee in Week 17.

Asked if Pearsall can better prepare himself to withstand injuries, Shanahan said he thought the receiver did that last offseason when he added weight and was one of the most physically fit players on the roster.

“I think he was leading the league in a lot of categories before he got hurt,” Shanahan said. “And then he landed on his knee in the wrong way. And when you land on your knee the wrong way, and you hurt your PCL, sometimes that can last a week, like (Los Angeles Rams receiver) Puka (Nacua) last year. Sometimes it can last seven weeks.”

“So, can he prepare to not land on his knee? No.”

Odds and ends

• Shanahan called assistant head coach Gus Bradley the top internal candidate to replace Robert Saleh at defensive coordinator.

“I wouldn’t say it’s a real wide net,” he said of the team’s upcoming search. “But I mean, Gus is the obvious one to everyone, and it is to us, too. Gus would be the main internal candidate.”

Bradley is a mentor of Saleh, the new Tennessee Titans head coach. He’s a three-time NFL defensive coordinator who was head coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars from 2013 to 2016.

• Lynch said rookie defensive tackle Alfred Collins might have to have a procedure on his shoulder in the coming weeks. Tight end Jake Tonges, meanwhile, has a plantar fascia issue with his foot but won’t need surgery. Linebacker Nick Martin, who suffered a concussion on Nov. 30, has been making steady progress recently, Lynch said, but is not quite out of the league’s concussion protocol.

• Lynch said defensive ends Nick Bosa and Mykel Williams, who suffered ACL tears in 2025, could be back around the time training camp opens. He wouldn’t put a firm timeline on any of their injured players, including George Kittle (Achilles), but all appear to at least have a chance of being ready before Week 1. Lynch said Bosa was “tracking really well.”

• Tailback Jordan James got his first carries Saturday in Seattle, and Shanahan said the rookie finished the season with a flourish.

“He was ready to go here these last six weeks of the year, big time,” the coach said. “There wasn’t an opportunity for him. But if he has an offseason that we think he’s capable of and can improve, especially the way he looked here at the end of the year, I feel very excited about him helping us.”