With a lot of money already committed to their defense, the 49ers decided to release defensive tackle Arik Armstead last month in order to free up cap space. After selecting Armstread in the first round of the 2015 draft, San Francisco first proposed a pay reduction to the Oregon product, who was scheduled to earn a $17.4MM salary in 2024, his final year of contract.
When Armstead hit the open market, several clubs expressed interest in signing him, but he turned down the Niners’ offer. In the end, he signed a three-year deal with the Jaguars that was first reported to be worth $51 million. The Athletic’s David Lombardi claims that although the deal includes a $28MM signing bonus, its true value is $43.5MM.
As Lombardi notes, the Jags were simply willing to pay a substantial amount more than the 49ers in order to acquire Armstead’s services, regardless of the contract’s maximum value. The player himself confirms that the 49ers offered him a one-year, $6MM contract for 2024, with incentive provisions that could have increased the total payout to $8MM, in an episode of his Third and Long with Arik Armstead program on YouTube. Despite recognizing the challenges NFL teams frequently face in making business decisions, Armstead said he was “extremely disrepected” by the offer.
In the end, San Francisco traded for Maliek Collins from the Texans, replacing Armstread. Collins will cost $8MM in base pay and $8.47MM in cap space in 2024. According to Lombardi, the 49ers intend to use the money saved by releasing Armstead to sign wide receiver Brandon Aiyuk to a new deal. However, the most recent information on the subject suggests that Aiyuk and the 49ers are not at all close to reaching an agreement. Aiyuk has a fifth-year option that keeps him under club control until 2024.
Collins was not the only addition to the 49ers’ front seven as they also added Leonard Floyd and Yetur Gross-Matos, whose meager 2024 cap figures come in at $3.4MM and $3.2MM, respectively. Although Gross-Matos, a 2020 second-round pick of the Panthers, did not live up to the hype during his four years in Charlotte, Niners general manager John Lynch stated the 26-year-old edge defender attracted a lot of interest from across the league as a free agent.
“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 thinks that with San Francisco in a 4-3 alignment, Gross-Matos has a genuine chance to flourish because the team can use his versatility and put him in the best possible position.