The hot rumor in the Bay Area right now is the 49ers trading for Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver Antonio Brown.
49ers All-Pro tight end George Kittle has started the recruiting campaign. Hall of Fame wide receivers Michael Irvin and Jerry Rice have made it clear they want it to happen.
But Hall of Fame coach and NBC Sports studio analyst Tony Dungy has been through this sort of situation and is pumping the brakes just a little bit.
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"My question, to our personnel people, would always be, 'Why is this person available? If this is such a great player, why are they trying to trade him?' " Dungy said Tuesday on 95.7 The Game. "And sometimes, it can be as simple as money, maybe it's the contract and you say, 'OK, they don't have enough to pay him, he's disgruntled about money, we can fix that.' But if there are other reasons, underlying reasons, and usually there are because people aren't giving away great players just to help you be better, that's usually a red flag."
Dungy coached 49ers general manager John Lynch for six seasons in Tampa Bay, and he mentioned that they shied away from players with locker room issues.
"I don't know how they'll handle this one and what they'll do," Dungy said. "But for the most part, in my time, I found that people that have problems in one locker room, those problems don't usually vanish because they go to another locker room."
No doubt the 49ers have a tough decision to make if they truly are interested in Brown. Are they convinced that Brown won't bring his locker room issues with him to Santa Clara? With that uncertainty, is it worth paying the high price to get him?