It's not jargon, it's the team having all the control. Yes they can release a player, yes they can tear up his contract and give him a new deal. Know what I've never seen? A player saying "I quit" and voiding the contract to play for another team as has been suggested here. The Niners have all the leverage and all the control, none of what you are suggesting can happen without their help.
No thats not what im saying.
He cant just tear up the contract and go play for another team, hence the reason the niners have him by the balls until September 1st.
What im saying is that the contract can always be re-negotiated either by the current team or a team who is looking to trade for him.
What you normally see is a player renegotiating for more money, more years and more guarantees, it happens all the time, a team allows a player to seek a trade, compensation in the form of draft picks is worked out and a new deal is negotiated before the deal can be finalized.
What you pretty much never see is a player agreeing to take a paycut in the above circumstance.
The reason for that is in almost every instance it would be foolish, the player is better off waiting and forcing the team to release him so he can be a free agent and have negotiating power with 31 other teams.
However, this is not a normal circumstance, because of the voiding of his guarantees and his lack of fighting it the 49ers are in a unique situation where they have total leverage over him and yet owe him absolutely nothing.
He is by all accounts going to end up released but at this point possibly not until a week before the season starts and that will hinder his ability to not only be ready for this year but also get any real one year prove it deal because he wont be ready to contribute until halfway into the season.
This is a very unique situation and in my opinion its the one time where a player should realize hes better off working out a trade taking a huge paycut because he's going to have to anyway whether he likes it or not.
If we're serious about aiyuk we should contact the niners, work out modest compensation and then re-negotiate his deal as though he were already a free agent.
Everybody wins, the niners get something, we get our guy all offseason and aiyuk gets a little better one year prove it deal because he came in early.
In this idiotic stalemate, literally nobody wins.
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