In 2025, the San Francisco quarterback’s contract is up for renewal.
After making it to two Super Bowls and four NFC Championship Games in the previous five years, the San Francisco 49ers have emerged as one of the NFL’s most dominating teams in recent years. Although they are uncrowned, no team matches their consistency more than the Kansas City Chiefs, who defeated San Francisco in February of this year to win their third Super Bowl since 2019.
Even if they were not successful, the San Francisco 49ers can be happy that they have identified their future quarterback. Late in the 2022 season, Brock Purdy took over for the Trey Lance/Jimmy Garoppolo combination, and he guided his club to the NFC Championship Game. Despite playing well enough to secure the starting position for the 2023 season and producing well in his first full year under center, Purdy’s injury prevented them from moving forward.
The Iowa State graduate completed 69.4% of his passes while throwing for 4,280 yards. With 31 touchdowns and 11 interceptions, he had a successful year. Along with these stats, Purdy led the league in QBR (72.8), passer rating (113.0), yards gained per passing attempt (9.6), and touchdown percentage (7.0%).
Most significantly for his squad, Brock Purdy performed at that caliber despite earning essentially nothing in comparison to his peers. He was a seventh-round draft pick in the past and was paid $870,000 in his debut season. To put things in perspective, 17 quarterbacks in the NFL earned more than $870,000 per game the previous season. For a pittance, Purdy played like one of the better players at his position, giving San Francisco a huge edge. Due to the quarterback’s modest salary, the team can invest large sums of money in other areas of the roster to acquire elite players.
This partnership is not meant to endure forever. The day Purdy can sign a contract extension, which will occur during the 2025 offseason, he will be well compensated. During the owners’ meetings in Florida on Wednesday, Niners CEO Jed York addressed reporters about this subject and seemed prepared to compensate Purdy for being among the NFL’s lowest-paid players for a few years:
It is the nature of the market. “Break is going to make a request that no one has ever made before,” York remarked confidently. “I don’t know how many players are making over $40 million (annually) as a quarterback right now.”
“When we signed Jimmy several years ago, it was the largest deal in the history of the NFL, for three minutes,” York stated. Jimmy, though, was at $27.5 million. You have to accept the state of affairs as it is; that is the nature of the market.
“To me, the quarterback is the most important position not just in football, but all of sports, and those guys should be paid a lot of money.”
York is speaking the truth and doing all the right things to appease Purdy. The quarterback position is undoubtedly the most crucial in sports. Without at least an above-average quarterback, it is impossible to win games in the NFL at a high rate, and winning Super Bowls without one of the league’s finest signal-callers is extremely difficult. Although Brock Purdy did not quite meet the latter standard last year, he was well enough to be included in the former.
Brock Purdy is going to get a contract that sets the market if he maintains that level of performance in 2024. York notes that the organization must spend top dollar to prevent a good to excellent starting quarterback from becoming a free agent. Simply because Purdy is not on the same level as Patrick Mahomes does not mean that he will accept a lower price. It would be very difficult to find another quarterback who can lead the San Francisco 49ers deep into the postseason, therefore he is good enough to ask for the moon from the team, and they would be pleased to oblige him.
What would it look like in this situation to ask for the moon? Joe Burrow is currently the highest-paid quarterback in the NFL based on the total amount of their deal. In September, the former first overall pick, now worth $219 million guaranteed, inked a $275 million contract with the Cincinnati Bengals. Purdy’s target zone is that. He’ll probably seek for a five-year deal from San Francisco that is guaranteed to be worth above $200 million, with a total value of between $270 and $290 million. Although those figures could change depending on how well Purdy performs in 2024, that is the general framework for a new contract.
To be sure, that is a pretty penny. Yet it’s a necessary expense of operating in the NFL. Because they are so rare (and in such great demand), good starting quarterbacks can very much ask for and receive anything they want in a deal. There isn’t much the San Francisco 49ers can do about it. Luckily for Purdy, it appears that York is fully aware of that and will gladly sign the check when it’s time.
