In the wake of the untimely passing of former NFL defensive end Aldon Smith, a trio of lawyers has been hired to investigate the situation.
Via a press release issued Tuesday morning by Wukela Communication, Smith’s family has retained Harry Daniels, Bakari Sellers and Wayne Kendall.
The attorneys released the following statement: “As with anyone who dies so suddenly at such a young age, we understand that there is a great deal of interest in and speculation about Aldon Smith’s passing and we intend to get to the bottom of it. To that end, we have taken a number of steps including sending his brain to Boston where medical experts will examine it for CTE as well as other damage caused by years of concussions and additional trauma. In the meantime we simply ask you to keep Aldon’s family in our prayers and respect their privacy as they struggle to come to grips with this terrible loss.”
Smith’s friend, Amir Shirazi, told the San Francisco Chronicle that he and Smith had delivered pizzas to a homeless shelter on Saturday. Shirazi said they had stopped at Shirazi’s house and that, after Shirazi went inside for a moment, he found Smith in Sharazi’s vehicle, unresponsive.
49ers Clips
Kyle Juszczyk says the 49ers don’t need to win the offseason.
Juszczyk knows the Seahawks are the defending Super Bowl champions and the Rams are the talk of the NFL offseason, and if that means the 49ers are getting overlooked in the NFC West, Juszczyk said he’ll gladly accept that.
“We feel great about where our team is,” Juszczyk told NFL Media. “The fact that we won 13 games last season with all that we had to deal with, I think that’s easy to forget. And rightfully so. The Seahawks won a Super Bowl, the Rams had a great season, they had some great additions in the offseason, so I can understand why that is the case. But I think we feel great about where we’re at. I love our squad. I think that we have only improved. Guys are getting healthy. We added Mike Evans and Osa [Odighizuwa] on defense, which I think both of those guys are going to make such an impact. I think we’re sitting in a good spot. If people want to forget about us, that’s fantastic. That’s a good place to be sometimes.”
The 49ers have a strong team heading into 2026, but in the NFC West odds they’re +305 long shots, well behind the favored Rams (+100) and the defending champion Seahawks (+205). The 49ers will need to surprise some people to win the division. Juszczyk likes the sound of that.
A recent interview has emergedof Aldon Smith, a former NFL defensive end who died suddenly on Saturday.
A fairly short clip has been posted in several spots. It’s worth watching the whole interview.
Here’s part one. Part two. And part three. In all, it’s less than 30 minutes.
The interview was posted last week by Tee Maultsby, a barber who has filmed a series of videos of athletes getting haircuts. Smith provides a raw and authentic look at his life after football, which included door-to-door sales in the Texas heat while he was “broke” and wearing an ankle monitor.
A friend found Smith slumped an unresponsive in the friend’s truck, after they had delivered pizzas to a homeless shelter.
Smith makes it clear from the start that he’s struggling. Maultsby does a very good job of giving Smith space to talk through it.
No cause of death has been identified for Smith, who was only 36. He was a dominant player early for the 49ers in his career. Off-field issues derailed his career.
He persisted, returning to the NFL with the Cowboys, nine years after he was drafted. He started all 16 games in his final season.
Landing the World Cup included complying with plenty of FIFA requirements, including covering up the names of the 11 NFL stadiums that are hosting matches.
Levi’s has leaned to the absurdity of it all, by covering the logo on its Instagram account.
When Levi’s Stadium hosted its first World Cup match on Sunday, Levi’s posted a photo of the covered logo above the scoreboard, with this message: “Welcoming the world to the beautiful [redacted] stadium!”
The owners of the stadiums had no choice but to comply with that requirement and other FIFA terms, which included installing FIFA-quality grass and scrapping all over events for the weeks during which the stadiums were surrendered to the World Cup.
Yes, FIFA doesn’t want non-FIFA sponsors to get exposure during the World Cup. The end result is strange, to say the least, with the venues official known only by the city they’re in — and with the remaining signage confirming in Dwight Schrute style the fact that, indeed, it is a stadium.
Two days after deleting a pair of Instagram videos that criticized the 49ers for not releasing him, receiver Brandon Aiyuk is back on social media.
In his new video, he’s dancing. While wearing a robe and boxer shorts.
The caption says “coming to a endzone near [you].”
Combined with his decision to extend an olive branch by deleting the videos, it’s hard not to wonder whether the 49ers have decided to abandon the effort to trade Aiyuk and to cut the cord in the coming days. That would avoid the awkward dance of Aiyuk showing up to training camp and forcing his release.
The 49ers have proven their point. By refusing to release Aiyuk and holding out hope for a trade, they’ve wiped out his ability to get up to speed through his new team’s offseason program. At some point, rubbing Aiyuk’s nose in it takes the team’s eye off the bigger prize.
They need to just fold the tents, like they did when they admitted their mistake with quarterback Trey Lance. Focus on the positives, move on from the negatives.
And ensure that Aiyuk won’t be one of the hot topics when the team gathers for practices in the electromagnetic hot zone.
On the last day of his life, the talented but troubled former NFL defensive end Aldon Smith went to a charity for homeless people, and donated food.
That was confirmed by both the charity’s founder and Smith’s friend Amir Shirazi, who was with him on Saturday to make the delivery, and shortly after that found him unresponsive.
Shirazi says that Smith, whose NFL career was repeatedly interrupted by arrests, suspensions and other problems off the field, had been trying to turn his life around.
“He was a very sweet, caring, loving giant,” Shirazi told the San Francisco Chronicle. “That if you really knew him, you’d know who he truly is.”
After making the delivery, Shirazi and Smith drove to Shirazi’s house. Shirazi stepped inside for a moment, came back out and found Smith slumped over in Shirazi’s truck. Shirazi says he does not know Smith’s cause of death but believes it was natural causes.
“He was perfectly fine an hour before,” Shirazi said. “I came out and he was basically dead in my front seat. I’m just in shock.”
Scott Wagers, the co-founder of CHAM Deliverance Ministry, a local charity that feeds the homeless, told the San Francisco Chronicle that Shirazi and Smith showed up unexpectedly on Saturday with 10 pizzas.
“My impression was that this is a young man that wanted to help the homeless, which was great,” Wagers said. “When the 49ers and people like that want to help the community, that’s everything.”
Smith reportedly visited the 49ers’ facility to talk to the 49ers’ rookies recently, as part of his efforts to encourage younger players to follow the right path.
Smith was 36 years old.
The late Aldon Smith spent most of his career with the 49ers. His second NFL team, the Raiders, has issued a statement mourning Smith’s passing.
“The Raiders Family is deeply saddened to learn of the loss of Aldon Smith, who passed away at the age of 36,” the Raiders said. “Aldon played nine games for the Raiders in 2015 as part of a career in which he posted a remarkable 52.5 sacks in six active seasons. Aldon proudly wore the Silver and Black, was respected by his teammates and will be missed dearly. The thoughts and prayers of the entire Raider Nation are with Aldon’s family at this time.”
Smith was the seventh overall pick in the 2011 draft. He played for the 49ers, Raiders, and Cowboys.
Aldon Smith, a first-round pick who was a dominant pass rusher early in his career, has died. He was 36.
“We are devastated by the sudden and tragic passing of Aldon Smith,” the 49ers said in a statement. “Aldon’s undeniable talent and sheer dominance on the field were on display from the moment he joined our organization, having recorded one of the best rookie seasons the National Football League has seen. Beyond his excellence as a player, Aldon will be remembered for his infectious smile that lit up every room he walked into. Our entire organization sends its deepest condolences to the Smith family and all who knew and loved Aldon.”
The seventh overall selection in 2011, Smith had 33.5 sacks in his first 32 regular-season games. He finished second for the defensive rookie of the year award in 2011, and he was a first-team All-Pro and a Pro Bowler in 2012. He started Super Bowl XLVII with the 49ers.
He served a nine-game suspension in 2014 for violating the league’s substance abuse policy. Following a DUI arrest in August 2015, the 49ers released him.
That season, he appeared in nine games with seven starts for the Raiders. He was suspended indefinitely by the league after the Week 10 of the 2015 campaign. He missed all of the 2016 and 2017 seasons.
The Raiders released him in 2018, after an arrest for domestic violence. He joined the Cowboys in 2020, starting all 16 games and finishing with 5.0 sacks. The Seahawks signed him during the 2021 offseason; he was released in August.
We extend our condolences to Smith’s family, friends, teammates, and coaches.
Friday night’s World Cup match between the United States and Paraguay looked great. Most of the images from the 4-1 U.S. win didn’t look anything like the stadium in which it was played.
But it was indeed SoFi Stadium. With rich, lush, naturally green grass.
“Wonder if we could get that all season,” 49ers tight end George Kittle said on Twitter.
Although the 49ers’ annual visit to their home away from home to play the Rams won’t happen this year (they’ll square off in Australia), the 49ers will be at SoFi Stadium to play the Chargers in Week 15, for a Thursday night game.
Friday night’s soccer match showed what SoFi could be, what it would be, if Rams owner Stan Kroenke were to embrace grass.
But he won’t. It costs too much money to maintain a high-quality grass field. It complicates the effort to have all sorts of other events at the venue.
Cowboys owner Jerry Jones made that point earlier this year, regarding his no-questions-asked willingness to install grass at AT&T Stadium for the World Cup.
“We have more flexibility with the way we handle our surface at the stadium,” Jones said at the annual meetings in Phoenix, via Jordan Raanan of ESPN. “We have no belief that it’s any safer to play on a grass [field] or a turf. We are ambiguous as to the safety of it. The turf, actually like many things, improves the economics of being able to play this game and our players are the biggest benefactor of all. They get the best benefit of when we do good things financially, the players are benefiting. So I’m working for you, baby, OK, if you’re a player.
“And so the combination of that, I’m very comfortable putting some grass down for soccer under regulations and proud to be able to do it but quickly get that turf back out there to go about the other business of the stadium and the team.”
The safety narrative is a weak one. The NFL has muddied the issue by focusing on the statistical claim that the injury rate is the same on grass as it is on turf. This ignores player experience beyond the question of actual injuries. The human body takes less wear and tear when the forces it creates are absorbed by a grass field than when the forces ricochet back into the feet and up through the legs.
Besides, how does Jerry Jones hosting a bunch of other events in a football stadium benefit the football players on the Cowboys? At best, it gives him more money to pay players. In a salary-capped environment, however, who cares? The TV money and the ticket revenue from the football games gives owners more than enough money to finance the roster.
The simple reality is that the overwhelming majority of players — 92 percent — prefer grass.
“I’m going into year 10, and I can say wholeheartedly that grass feels way better than turf,” Giants offensive lineman Jermaine Eluemunor recently said, via Rohan Nadkarni of NBC News. “With MetLife getting grass, obviously it’s cool for FIFA and the World Cup. It’s one of the biggest stages in the world but, at the same time, the NFL as a whole is one of the most profitable businesses in the world, and so you would think that us as players would have a say in the fields that we get to play on.”
The players do have a say. In an environment of collective bargaining, however, they need to be willing to give something up to get something else. When the original artificial turf — a thin sheet of green all-weather carpet rolled over concrete — began to proliferate, the NFL Players Association allowed it. The owners secured the discretion to choose the playing surface without any real pushback.
Now that the pushback is happening, the only path for making high-quality grass universal comes from bargaining for it. And, if need be, going on strike to get it.
It all comes back to the fundamental imbalance between management and labor in pro football. The owners will shut the sport down to get what they want. The players won’t.
If the choice is football on artificial turf or no football at all, the players will choose football on artificial turf. And the owners will ignore the P.R. complications flowing from the hypocrisy of writing a blank check for FIFA, because at the end of the day it’s all just words. Until the words are backed up by actions, nothing will change.
Hell, Jones probably likes the fact that the grass vs. turf debate exists. His view is that there’s no such thing as bad publicity. And so, on top of the fact that Jones and other owners make more money from staging their teams’ games on turf, the organic debate over an inorganic playing surface becomes another twist in the ultimate reality show.
And it’s a twist with no stakes. Unless and until the NFLPA is willing to do something other than create public pressure at which the owners won’t even blink, the back-and-forth over turf vs. grass will be nothing but noise.
So that’s the real question. Will the players simply talk about their preference for grass or, when the current Collective Bargaining Agreement expires in 2031, will they do something about it?
Given that most of the men who’ll be playing pro football in 2031 are currently in college or high school, it’s way too early to know the choice they’ll make. History, however, tells us that the decision between playing on artificial turf and not playing at all will be a no-brainer.
In the interim, is it possible that the players could emerge from talks over an expanded season with universal grass fields? Yes. To get there, however, they may have to be willing to go not from 17 regular-season games to 18 but from 17 to 20.
Kyle Shanahan is one of a handful of NFL coaches who would immediately be hired elsewhere if his team ever moved on. In nine seasons with the 49ers, Shanahan has made five playoff appearances, with a 9-5 postseason record and two Super Bowl appearances.
The only thing he hasn’t done is win a ring.
49ers tight end George Kittle was asked whether Shanahan could find himself on the hot seat if the 49ers remain ringless after this season.
“Anybody that says Kyle Shanahan is on the hot seat, you guys are not the smartest,” Kittle told Nick Brinkerhoff of USA Today. “It doesn’t make any sense to me.”
Shanahan finished fifth in Coach of the Year voting in 2025 after the 49ers qualified for the playoffs despite an injury-plagued season. Kittle, Nick Bosa, Fred Warner and Brock Purdy were among the players who missed time.
“The fact that we were able to go to the playoffs, win a road game, and make it to the second round is pretty incredible to me,” Kittle said.
