49ers' Brandon Aiyuk ran faster at ASU than all but three NFL players

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Anyone who saw him play at Arizona State knows that one thing is unequivocally true about 49ers first-round pick Brandon Aiyuk: the man is remarkably fast in the open field.

So fast in fact, that only three NFL players reached a higher speed in-game than Aiyuk’s 21.97 mph, recorded by a GPS device within Aiyuk’s shoulder pads.

In addition to former 49er Matt Breida, whose 22.3 mph was the top speed in the league in 2019, returners Cordarrelle Patterson from the Chicago Bears and Brandon Wilson from the Cincinnati Bengals were the only other players to be tracked at a faster rate.

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Aiyuk’s pedestrian 4.5 40-yard dash at the NFL Scouting Combine made some question the hype, but a core-muscle injury Aiyuk had surgery to repair contributed to that slow time, according to 49ers vice president of player personnel Adam Peters.

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“Dom DeCicco brought up a great point because Dom had had the same injury,” Peters told The Athletic. “And he told me that to be able to run a 4.5 with that injury — it’s not only painful but it’s really, really hard to do.”

DeCicco is one of the 49ers’ scouts and recognized that Aiyuk’s combine performance clearly was hampered by the surgery.

The speedster has plenty of time to recover before the 2020 regular season, when he finally can bring that top-of-the-line acceleration to Levi’s Stadium.

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