Needing to clear cap space and with a considerable amount of resources invested in their defensive front already, the 49ers elected to release defensive tackle Arik Armstead last month. San Francisco, which selected Armstread in the first round of the 2015 draft, first offered the Oregon product the opportunity to remain with the club via a pay reduction (he was due to earn a $17.4MM salary in 2024, the final year of his contract).
Armstead declined the Niners’ proposal, and he drew interest from multiple clubs upon reaching the open market. He ultimately scored a three-year contract with the Jaguars, which was initially reported as a $51MM accord. David Lombardi of The Athletic says that the deal is actually worth $43.5MM, though it includes $28MM guaranteed at signing (subscription required).
Regardless of the contract’s maximum value, the Jags were simply prepared to pay significantly more than the 49ers to secure Armstead’s services, as Lombardi writes. In an episode of his Third and Long with Arik Armstead program on YouTube, the player himself confirms that the 49ers offered him a one-year, $6MM contract for 2024, with incentive provisions that could have pushed the total payout to $8MM. While acknowledging the difficulty of the business decisions that NFL clubs often have to make, Armstead nonetheless said he felt “extremely disrepected” by the offer.
San Francisco ultimately replaced Armstread by swinging a trade with the Texans for Maliek Collins, who comes with an $8MM base salary and $8.47MM cap charge in 2024. Per Lombardi, the team hopes to put the money saved by the Armstead release into a new contract for wide receiver Brandon Aiyuk, though the latest reporting on that topic indicates that the 49ers and Aiyuk are not close on their extension talks. Aiyuk is under club control through 2024 via the fifth-year option.
In addition to Collins, the 49ers further buttressed their front seven by signing Leonard Floyd and Yetur Gross-Matos, whose modest 2024 cap numbers check in at $3.4MM and $3.2MM, respectively. While Gross-Matos, a second-round pick of the Panthers in 2020, did not live up to expectations during his four-year run in Charlotte, Niners GM John Lynch said the 26-year-old edge defender generated significant free agent interest from around the league.
“I thought (Gross-Matos’ agent) handled it like a house in Los Altos,” Lynch said (via Lombardi). “He priced it low, then he got the whole league interested and then everybody (got in on the bidding). Yetur was the guy that we signed that we had the most people in the league say, ‘Man, we were in on him.’ A lot of guys were after him.”
Lynch believes Gross-Matos has a real opportunity to thrive in San Francisco’s 4-3 alignment, which will allow the team to utilize his versatility and put him in the best position to succeed.
