Antonio Brown trade rumors: 5 teams who should be in the mix

1. San Francisco 49ers

From Jerry Rice to Terrell Owens, to his own Photo-shopping, there are prominent indications Brown has his eye on the 49ers.  As they look to be a year-later-than-expected sleeper team in 2019, with Jimmy Garoppolo and Jerick McKinnon coming back from respective ACL tears to bolster optimism, some significant moves may be coming.

Tight end George Kittle is a stud, and he went to social media himself to recruit Brown to San Francisco. But beyond him the 49ers seriously lack weapons in the passing game. A healthy Marquise Goodwin, fully engaged without personal things going on off the field, will help, and Dante Pettis showed some promise as a rookie. But things fall away quickly at wide receiver after those two, and that isn’t ideal to get the best out of Garoppolo going forward.

The refrain is constant on this list, but San Francisco is equipped with $63.8 million in cap space right now (seventh-most on the league). Brown’s 2019 salary, $12.625 million, is easy to take on then with 2020 ($11.3 million) and 2021 ($12.5 million) hardly salary cap-busting for the 49ers (or anyone, really). And if Brown wants to play for them, that’s a bonus in general manager John Lynch’s corner.