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© Steve Mitchell | 2020 Jan 29
Three years into his tenure as 49ers general manager, and John Lynch had a public contract dispute on his hands.
Running back Raheem Mostert’s agent publicly requested a trade from the 49ers earlier this month, amidst claims that San Francisco wasn’t willing to play ball on a restructure. From the perspective of the Mostert camp, the running back deserved more money after his breakout season in 2019, instead of the $2.5 million per year “special teams” contract he signed last offseason.
Ultimately Mostert got what he wanted, agreeing to a restructured deal on Monday. All’s well that ends well, but Lynch told Murph and Mac on Tuesday morning that he wasn’t exactly thrilled when the Mostert camp initially went public.
“My reaction was ‘what the heck are you doing? C’mon now,’” Lynch said in his first public comments on the matter. “I was not happy.”
Lynch was less frustrated with the player, who he says he ‘loves,’ and more so with his agent Brett Tessler.
“What’s sometimes frustrating during these — but I was a player so I understand it — you don’t talk directly with the player, you’re talking through an agent, and sometimes I think because of that there can be things lost in communication.”
Lynch says that a restructure for Mostert’s contract was already on the list of team priorities this offseason.
“What we ultimately did we always planned on doing. It’s frustrating that that did transpire but cooler heads had to prevail, and we had to understand that Raheem is a very important player to our team. The way he came on last year was a huge reason as to why we were in the Super Bowl and our team’s success.
“That’s something that we wanted to do, we had some ideas on how we could do it, unfortunately that became public, but we weren’t going to let that change our course. The good news is it’s all taken care of, he’s happy, and we look forward to seeing him here soon.
“We’re all moving on. No bad blood.”