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Bill Barnwell, ESPN Staff Writer
In 2024, the San Francisco 49ers will enjoy a third and likely final season of the biggest bargain in sports. After selecting quarterback Brock Purdy with the 262nd and final pick of the 2022 draft, they signed the Iowa State product to a four-year, $3.7 million contract. He was guaranteed just $77,008, roughly 0.2% of what No. 1 overall pick Travon Walker was assured by the Jaguars when he was picked.
Since then, Purdy has emerged as one of the league’s most productive quarterbacks. Taking over for the injured Trey Lance and then Jimmy Garoppolo, he has gone 17-4 as the starter while posting a 71.4 QBR over the past two seasons. The only passers to top that mark since the start of 2022 are Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen. Purdy also has led San Francisco on two deep playoff runs, with one ended by a torn UCL in his right elbow in the NFC Championship Game and the other by Mahomes in Super Bowl LVIII. The only quarterback to win more playoff games than Purdy’s four over his first two seasons is Ben Roethlisberger.
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And yet, perhaps because of his status as a seventh-round pick, there’s skepticism around Purdy that doesn’t seem to be there with other quarterbacks producing at his level. If there’s an advantage an NFL signal-caller can enjoy, he seems to have it. He has played his entire brief career with an incredible set of playmakers, a group I’ve ranked No. 1 in the league in both my 2023 and 2024 season previews. He has played behind perhaps the best left tackle in football in Trent Williams, and his playcaller is Kyle Shanahan, who has a well-earned reputation as one of the elite offensive minds in all of football.
Some have used that to essentially write off Purdy’s performance as a product of his environment. Others have ignored it and suggested he has brought the offense to a top level independent of the players around him. I’m not sure I agree with either statement, but there seems to be a truth somewhere in the middle about how essential he is to San Francisco’s chances of winning a Super Bowl.
With a potential raise of about $60 million per season looming as Purdy becomes eligible for a new deal in 2025, this season certainly feels like the 49ers’ last chance of winning a Super Bowl with this current roster construction. General manager John Lynch & Co. will need to choose one of two paths over the next 24 months. One is re-signing Purdy and making cutbacks elsewhere, potentially to the very playmakers who have helped elevate Purdy’s game. The other is a path virtually no team has been willing to consider in the modern game: keeping the playmakers and everything else on the roster and moving on from a productive quarterback once he gets expensive, even if that means starting over with an unknown.
Let’s take a look into what’s going to be the most fascinating decision of the next year. What can we say about Purdy’s performance? Are there other quarterbacks who have been this productive early in their careers before being found out later? What sort of cutbacks would the 49ers have to consider if they moved on from their QB? Why are they more sensitive to those changes than other teams? And could they really justify moving on from Purdy and starting over with another low-cost option?
We’ll start with Purdy’s on-field performance to put the start of his career into context.
Jump to a section:
Just how good has Purdy’s two-year run been?
How does he compare vs. other Shanahan QBs?
What could his next actual contract look like?
What would a massive extension mean for the 49ers?
The ticking time bomb on the San Francisco roster
Wait, could the 49ers trade Purdy instead?
How good is Purdy historically?
Very good. One way we can consider Purdy’s performance in context with others through history is using the indexed statistics from Pro Football Reference, which normalize performance relative to the rest of the league with 100 as the annual average. Purdy posted an impressive 123 adjusted net yards per attempt index (ANY/A+) as a rookie in limited time, then led the NFL with 146 ANY/A+ the following season. He also led the NFL last season in yards per attempt, net yards per attempt, adjusted yards per attempt, touchdown percentage and passer rating, so this isn’t just cherry-picking one stat to measure Purdy’s production or efficiency.
The 146 ANY/A+, as it turns out, is the second-best mark in league history for a player in his first two seasons across at least 250 pass attempts. First is Dan Marino, who won league MVP while taking his Dolphins to the Super Bowl. Fourth is Mahomes, who won league MVP in his first full season as a starter while taking the Chiefs to the AFC Championship Game. Fifth is Kurt Warner, who … won league MVP in his first full season as a starter while also winning the Super Bowl. Elsewhere in the top 20 are early seasons from future Hall of Famers like Roethlisberger and Peyton Manning.
And yet, at the same time, there are quarterbacks who hit lofty heights early on and never really got back there. Nick Foles’ white-hot 2013 season with Chip Kelly and the Eagles — which included a 27-2 touchdown-to-interception ratio — ranked third. Daunte Culpepper’s 2000 Vikings campaign with a 1,500-yard rusher (Robert Smith) and two future Hall of Fame receivers (Cris Carter and Randy Moss) is eighth. Ken O’Brien is 15th, while Robert Griffin’s rookie season with Shanahan and Kyle’s father, Mike, in Washington is 18th.
To be fair, it certainly feels like there are explanations for the players who didn’t continue to play at that level. Foles was running a unique tempo-intensive scheme that the league caught up with after an offseason to prepare. Culpepper struggled with injuries, but he had a 4,717-yard campaign in 2004 before suffering a catastrophic hit to his knee and failing to recover to his prior level of play. Griffin was both running a unique scheme (zone-read out of the Pistol) and suffered a serious knee injury at the end of his rookie season. Purdy could get hurt in the future, but there’s no reason to discount or doubt his ability to perform in the years to come simply because of that risk.
The fact Purdy was also playing at a high level as a rookie before improving even further in his first full season as a starter seems like it should help his case. If we expand our group out to players with at least 150 pass attempts in a season who posted ANY/A+ marks of 120 or more in each of their first two campaigns, the list would be two people long: Marino and Purdy. Include Year 3, and you add six more players who accomplished it twice in their first three campaigns. The worst quarterback in that bunch is either Jared Goff or Boomer Esiason.
Is posting an elite ANY/A+ early in your career proof that you’ll be a great quarterback through the entirety of a second contract? No. It certainly looks like a strong indicator, though, and many of the other quarterbacks who struggled after a hot start had more red flags in terms of how they got to their elite level of play than Purdy does at this time. And even if Purdy were to drop back to his rookie level of play, that would still be a well above-average quarterback; C.J. Stroud posted a 123 ANY/A+ last season and ranked third in the NFL.
There’s one other player I want to mention, though, as part of the case against Purdy. Tua Tagovailoa ranked second in the NFL, posting a 124 ANY/A+ last season. Like Purdy, Tagovailoa is blessed with an elite set of playmakers, notably star wideouts Tyreek Hill and Jaylen Waddle. Like Purdy, Tagovailoa is coached by a former member of that Washington staff in Mike McDaniel, who cut his teeth working underneath Shanahan for several seasons in San Francisco. And like Purdy, there’s a healthy skepticism of Tagovailoa and whether his ability and performance actually live up to the numbers he’s posting in Miami.
There are differences, too, of course. Tagovailoa doesn’t have an elite running back (like Christian McCaffrey) or tight end (like George Kittle), though former 49ers back Raheem Mostert and rookie De’Von Achane were extremely efficient on the ground in 2023. Tagovailoa was a legendary college player who came off the board in the top five of the draft, so there isn’t the same disconnect between his draft stock and his eventual NFL performance. And while Purdy has won four playoff games in two seasons, Tagovailoa waited four seasons before losing in his first postseason appearance against the Chiefs in January 2024.
Is it too simplistic to lump Purdy in with Tagovailoa and other quarterbacks who have excelled under Shanahan and his lieutenants around the NFL, though? Are there signs Purdy is getting a disproportionate amount of help from his teammates and coaching staff? Let’s take a closer look and contrast Purdy with the other QBs who benefit from a Shanahan system boost.
Are there holes in Purdy’s game?
I’ll go situation by situation here to see if the old tropes about the Shanahan-scheme quarterback apply to Purdy.
Does he succeed in obvious passing situations? One of the most common arguments for Shanahan-era quarterbacks is they need heavy doses of play-action to thrive. They dominate on early downs, when teams are expecting the run, but get them in an obvious passing situation where defenses aren’t worried about the run, and they struggle with tougher matchups and reads.
We can define “obvious passing situations” in a lot of different ways, but let’s go with a simple one: third-and-long. On third down with 8 or more yards to go, how does Purdy fare? Very well. Everyone is worse on third-and-long, but Purdy’s 56.6 QBR in those situations ranks sixth in the NFL over the past two seasons. He averages 8.4 yards per throw, which is fifth in the league, and his 0.18 expected points added per dropback (EPA/dropback) in those situations is also fifth.
I’m not sure this trope really holds up, to be honest. The quarterback who ranked third in these spots over the past two years by EPA per dropback is Garoppolo, who spent part of that time with the Patriots. The guy between him and Garoppolo is Tagovailoa. You might argue Purdy should be blowing guys like Garoppolo and Tagovailoa away on third-and-long if he’s a superior quarterback to either, but it’s also clear that obvious passing situations aren’t a week-to-week problem for Purdy.
Let’s consider another measure of obvious passing situations. NFL Next Gen Stats assigns a passing probability to each snap given what history suggests about down, distance and game situation. If we just look at plays where there was an expectation of at least 75% that a pass was coming, Purdy’s 0.14 EPA per play over the past two years ranks third in the league behind Mahomes and Allen. Pretty good company. Tagovailoa is fifth, while Stroud is 10th.
Purdy and the other Shanahan-scheme quarterbacks, by the way, are still ripping plenty of big plays on first downs. Purdy comfortably leads the league by averaging 10.5 yards per attempt on first-and-10 over the past two seasons. Ryan Tannehill is second, Stroud (coached on offense by former 49ers coordinator Bobby Slowik) is third, Tagovailoa is fourth and Garoppolo is sixth.
Can he operate as a pure dropback quarterback? Yes. Purdy’s 71.7 QBR without play-action over the past two years leads the league. This is a much bigger concern for Stroud, who ranked 16th in the NFL in QBR without a play-fake.
Does he struggle when he’s trailing? Purdy’s worst game of last season was on Christmas against the Ravens, when a nationally televised loss to Baltimore took him out of the MVP race and elevated Lamar Jackson to the top spot. Purdy and the 49ers got out to a 5-0 lead, only for the Ravens to score 33 of the next 40 points. Purdy threw four interceptions before being lifted for Sam Darnold, who tossed a fifth in garbage time. Two of his four picks came while the 49ers were ahead, but the other two came after they fell behind.
The good news for Purdy is he does lead the league in yards per attempt when he’s trailing over the past two seasons. (Tagovailoa is second, while Stroud is third.) The problem is he does seem to be prone to throwing more interceptions. Purdy has thrown as many touchdowns (nine) as interceptions while trailing over the past two years. He has a 35-6 touchdown-to-interception ratio when either tied or ahead.
While Purdy has posted a 6% interception rate when trailing so far as a pro, Tagovailoa is at 3% over that same timeframe, while Stroud didn’t throw a single interception while playing from behind during his rookie campaign. The league as a whole throws interceptions on about 2.4% of their pass attempts while playing from behind, so while we’re only talking about a 149-pass sample, this is a problem for Purdy.
Can he throw deep? This was one of the missing pieces in the San Francisco offense with Garoppolo at the helm. From 2019 to 2021, Garoppolo ranked 37th in the league in air yards per attempt at 6.8, ahead of only Goff and Drew Brees. Garoppolo was efficient enough when he did throw deep, but he averaged fewer than two deep shots per game — or roughly about 7% of his dropbacks. The league as a whole went deep more than 11% of the time over that same stretch of time. Lance, meanwhile, threw the deepest average pass of any quarterback in football during his spot starts for Garoppolo in 2021.
Purdy is between those two extremes. His average pass over the past two seasons has traveled 7.6 yards in the air, which is just a hair above league average. When he does throw deep, Purdy has more efficient than Garoppolo had been, as his 97.5 QBR on deep balls is the third-best mark in football. Purdy still doesn’t throw deep quite as often as other passers, though; about 9% of his passes as a pro have been deep throws. For Stroud, meanwhile, that mark was up over 11% as a rookie.
While he’s not Lance or Stroud in terms of arm strength, Purdy doesn’t have the sort of capacity issues that would make me worried about his ability throwing downfield. Most of his most prominent misses on downfield throws so far as a pro have been overthrows on double moves or miscommunication on routes, where he expected a receiver to slow down into an empty zone and the receiver instead proceeded to continue running (or vice versa). Garoppolo’s reticence to throw deep put a cap on the San Francisco offense and its ceiling. That’s not really the case with Purdy so far.
Can he throw to the outside? If you close your eyes and envision a big play from the 49ers over the past two years, it’s probably an in-breaking route from someone like Brandon Aiyuk, Deebo Samuel Sr. or Kittle. Shanahan loves to attack linebackers and safeties in coverage, so it should be no surprise that Purdy has thrown 46.1% of his passes over the past two seasons on in-breaking routes, per NFL Next Gen Stats. That’s tops in the league. Behind him? Garoppolo in second, Tagovailoa in third and Stroud in fourth. No surprise there.
Is Purdy able to be as effective of a passer when he’s throwing routes that break vertically or out to the sidelines? Yes. He has averaged 0.41 EPA per dropbacks on those throws over the past two years, which is comfortably the best mark in football. Tagovailoa is second, Dak Prescott is third, Allen is fourth and Stroud is fifth.
Does he benefit from more wide-open receivers? NFL Next Gen Stats tracks how open targeted receivers are when they catch the football. We can use those numbers in a few different ways to get a sense of how Purdy benefits from the space created by his scheme and receivers.
On the whole, Purdy’s intended targets aren’t notably open. The average separation between his receiver and the nearest defender is 3.5 yards, which is exactly league average. That could be influenced by the routes he’s choosing to throw, but even if we just focus on in-breaking routes like angles, crossers, ins and posts, the average separation on Purdy throws is at 3.3 yards, just narrowly above the league-average of 3.2 yards.
Next Gen Stats also splits the separation rates up into buckets, which gives us some further insight. More than 47% of Purdy’s throws are to open receivers (defined as at least 3 yards of separation at the time the pass arrives), which is well above the league average of 43.4%. It’s the seventh-highest mark in football. At the same time, though, just 21.2% of Purdy’s passes are to wide-open receivers (5 or more yards of separation), which is 25th in the league over the past two years. The same trends hold if we just focus on the in-breaking routes, so it’s not strictly a product of where Purdy throws the ball. Purdy’s receivers are open … but not wide open.
ESPN’s receiver tracking metrics present a mixed bag that mostly aligns with our findings on the whole. They track each receiver’s route throughout the play — regardless of whether he is targeted or not — to get a sense of how much more effective he is at getting open than the competition. Performance is drilled down to a score 0-100 on what’s known as open score.
Last season, Aiyuk’s 81 open score ranked ninth in the NFL among wide receivers. Samuel? Not quite so high. The bruising wideout’s 39 open score was 91st out of 109 qualifying receivers. Samuel comfortably led all receivers in YAC Score, but he wasn’t constantly open for Purdy. Kittle ranked third in open score among tight ends, but McCaffrey was just 30th among running backs. Again, the star back made up for it elsewhere, posting a 99 catch score that tied him with Chuba Hubbard atop the charts for halfbacks.
To put it another way, just 11.9% of Purdy’s throws over the past two years were into what the league defines as tight windows, passes with no more than one yard of separation between the receiver and defender on arrival. That’s the fifth-lowest mark of any quarterback in football. If your measure of QB performance places a huge emphasis on quarterbacks fitting throws into tight windows, it’s tough to look at Purdy and feel great about his ability to do that regularly.
At the same time, is it better to be able to throw into tight windows or avoid them altogether? The other quarterbacks who avoided tight windows at the highest rates in the league included Mahomes, Jackson and Trevor Lawrence. On the flip side, while Prescott threw into tight windows at the second-highest rate in the league, the other passers making those throws at the highest rate were Mitchell Trubisky, Marcus Mariota, Zach Wilson, Kenny Pickett and Carson Wentz. Purdy’s receivers make it easier for him to avoid tight windows, perhaps, but this list looks like it’s more about anticipation and decision-making than aptitude for ball placement in small windows.
The way the 49ers use their personnel does make life easier for Purdy. In a league where more and more teams use light boxes, the presence of Kittle, McCaffrey and fullback Kyle Juszczyk as potential eligibles scares teams away from getting their players out of the box. Just 57.4% of Purdy’s dropbacks over the past two years have come against a light box, the lowest rate for any quarterback. Jordan Love is just behind him in third, while the two primary Falcons quarterbacks over the past two years (Mariota and Desmond Ridder) are also in the top four. Jackson ranks fifth.
Does he get more yards after catch than other quarterbacks? Yes. It’s probably no surprise given Samuel is perennially the best YAC receiver in football and McCaffrey and Kittle are so good in open space, but Purdy’s passes have produced an average of 6.3 yards after catch per reception over the past two seasons. The only quarterback who has generated more average YAC is Mahomes.
While there’s no exact split of how a quarterback impacts YAC versus his receivers, Garoppolo is third over that stretch, primarily because of what he did with the 49ers in 2022. If we go back to 2019 through 2021, even without McCaffrey, Garoppolo’s 6.7 average yards after catch per reception were nearly a full yard ahead of anybody else in the league. This does seem like a benefit spurred on by Shanahan’s scheme and the playmakers as opposed to Purdy himself, and the extra YAC helps generate gaudy yards per attempt figures for Purdy.
Another piece of evidence that this is scheme and/or playmaker-dependent is an NFL Next Gen Stats metric known as yards after catch over expectation (YACOE). It uses the location and velocity of players and defenders at the time of a catch to calculate an expected yards after catch total. Using this metric, we can gauge how good a team and each individual player is at producing extra yards after catch versus what an average player would have produced in the same situation.
Despite changing quarterbacks repeatedly because of injuries over that stretch, Shanahan’s 49ers offenses have been in the top-three in YACOE each of the past six seasons. They led the league in 2018, when Garoppolo tore his ACL in September and was replaced by C.J. Beathard and Nick Mullens. They did it again in 2020, when Garoppolo was limited to six games by injuries. They were second in 2022, when Garoppolo, Lance and Purdy all split time. It’s pretty clear this isn’t some new skill Purdy has brought to the offense.
2:10
Why McAfee is betting on a Chiefs-Niners Super Bowl rematch
Pat McAfee breaks down the early odds for Super Bowl LIX and explains why he likes a rematch between Patrick Mahomes and Brock Purdy.
Is that a reason to tap the breaks? Not necessarily. Let’s normalize every team’s passing yardage as if they received average performance from their receivers after the catch to try and minimize the impact of that data boosting the 49ers’ quarterbacks up the charts. Would they still be as efficient if we bring their YAC totals back to earth?
Yes. Even after regressing every teams’ YAC to the mean, the Niners would have averaged 8.4 yards per attempt last season, the best mark in the league. (The NFL’s expected YAC numbers are split by team as opposed to individual quarterbacks, so we have to include a little bit of Darnold in San Francisco’s results.) They’re just ahead of the Dolphins in second, while the Texans are sixth. YAC gives Purdy a boost, but it doesn’t explain his or his team’s performance.
Does he struggle out of structure? This tends to be a criticism of quarterbacks who thrive in offenses with great playmakers and coaching. The idea is understandable: While a quarterback might look great when he has easy solutions and knows what’s coming on defense, it’s harder to make magic happen when he’s forced to create on the fly. That’s a place where super-talented, big-armed quarterbacks like Mahomes and Allen excel. Is Purdy in their league?
We can split the idea of “out of structure” a few different ways. Let’s start with timing. The NFL defines passes “in rhythm” as plays in which the quarterback holds the ball for a time between 2.5 and four seconds, and plays that are “out of rhythm” as ones in which the quarterback holds the ball for more than four seconds. (Everything shorter is defined as quick throws.)
Unsurprisingly, over the past two seasons, Mahomes and Allen rank Nos. 1 and 2 in EPA per dropback when they hold the ball for more than four seconds. Purdy ranks fifth in EPA per dropback and No. 1 in success rate, which measures how often the offense stays on schedule in terms of generating expected points. That tells us he isn’t creating quite as many explosive plays as Mahomes or Allen in those out-of-rhythm situations, but he’s producing steady gains more often than anybody else. This wasn’t the case under Garoppolo, as the 49ers ranked below league average in EPA per dropback in those situations between 2019 and 2021 with their former starter on the field.
What about throwing under pressure? Again, by EPA per dropback, this was a problem for Garoppolo, who was below average when opposing pass rushes got home. It’s not for Purdy, who ranks fifth in EPA per dropback under pressure over the past two seasons. Two of the four players ahead of him are part-timers Andy Dalton and Jacoby Brissett.
Purdy doesn’t fare as well when he throws while scrambling. His 0.03 EPA per dropback while on the move is just above league average. When he’s throwing on the run — traveling more than eight miles per hour — his EPA/dropback is minus-0.22, which is just below the league average of minus-0.18. This is probably the biggest weakness in his game, but it’s also a situation he only faces about 15% of the time.
Unlike other quarterbacks who might have been coddled in comfortable systems and struggled to thrive when the situation isn’t perfect, I’d argue Purdy’s a little riskier and rambunctious than other passers in that archetype. He’s almost too comfortable making trick shot throws when improvising, as Shanahan suggested after a lob to Kittle produced a touchdown last season:
Kyle Shanahan called this “one of [Brock Purdy’s] worst decisions I think he’s made since he’s been here”
You cannot survive as a starting NFL QB making these sorts of throws
Unless they work pic.twitter.com/rvMSosuuqt
— Bill Barnwell (@billbarnwell) November 13, 2023
Does the evidence say Purdy’s performance is a mirage? Not really, no. You can poke holes here and there — and there’s no doubt he benefits from having great players around him in the offense and Shanahan on the sidelines — but he’s producing at such a high level that you can even take some of the air out of his YAC numbers and still see elite production. He’s better than Tagovailoa and Stroud are now and better than Garoppolo was, especially in imperfect situations. He’s not quite as good out of structure relative to the rest of the league as he is in structure, but he’s certainly been good enough in those moments to avoid dragging the team down on a consistent basis.
One point I would make about personnel, though, is Purdy’s gotten to play virtually his entire career with McCaffrey, and the star back has helped unlock a new level of offense for the 49ers. Consider that before McCaffrey arrived, the 49ers were struggling. Through the first six weeks of the 2022 season, they ranked 19th in EPA per play. After trading for McCaffrey and before Purdy entered the lineup, they jumped to fifth. They were third after Purdy took over in 2022 and first last season.
Garoppolo spent the vast majority of his time with the 49ers without an elite running back, given that they were mostly mixing in journeymen and midround picks when Jerick McKinnon got injured. Lance didn’t get to play with McCaffrey and only had Kittle present in one of his four starts. I don’t think McCaffrey would have single-handedly made the difference for Garoppolo, nor would Kittle have turned Lance into a superstar, but it helps to have playmakers around when they’re the best group in the game.
With that being said, Purdy hasn’t needed the full complement of stars to make the offense work. When he has had McCaffrey, Aiyuk, Samuel and Kittle all on the field at the same time, he has posted a 71.9 QBR. When at least one of those guys has been missing, he … has actually been slightly better, sporting a 72.9 QBR. He has only had the big four together at the same time for about half of his dropbacks, so he needs to excel when at least one of his key playmakers are off the field. Thankfully for San Francisco, that hasn’t been a problem.
What would Purdy’s contract extension look like?
Probably larger than you think or 49ers fans care to imagine. Right now, the top of the market for a quarterback coming off his third season is the five-year, $275 million deal signed by Jacksonville’s Lawrence in June. Purdy has been a more productive and successful player than Lawrence, even if he doesn’t have the same draft pedigree as the 2021 No. 1 overall pick.
Between now and then, we’re expected to see other quarterbacks sign extensions. Love is on the verge of inking a massive extension, while Prescott and the Cowboys could find common ground on an extension before the end of the league year, given that he would otherwise be an unrestricted free agent after the season. It would be a surprise if one or both of those passers didn’t break the latest threshold and make $60 million per year on their new contracts.
On top of that, Purdy isn’t eligible to sign his extension until 2025, when the salary cap should rise even further. The cap has risen an average of just under 12% per year over the past three seasons, and if we pencil that in as the expected rise for next year, it would jump from $255.4 million all the way north of $286 million. That creates more space for the 49ers to work with as they build a Purdy deal, but it also encourages him to land a larger contract to keep in line with the actual value of other contracts.
If he continues this level of play, my best estimate is that a Purdy deal would come in around five years and $325 million, for an average of $65 million per season. It’s always possible the quarterback could take some semblance of a reduced salary to try to make life easier for his team, but after making just $2.6 million over the first three years of his existing deal, I’m not sure why he would be willing to cut the 49ers any slack. (He has made a few hundred thousand dollars by virtue of the league’s performance-based pay system, but he’s still going to be the most underpaid player in football by a considerable margin.)
The 49ers would also have less leverage over Purdy than a team like the Jaguars would have over Lawrence. First-round picks have their rookie deals fully guaranteed, but in return, they also have a fifth-year option at a prescribed price that factors in position and early performance. As a result, when a first-round pick becomes eligible for free agency, they’re really four years away from unrestricted free agency, given that a team has the fourth year of their rookie deal, a fifth-year option and two potential franchise tags before running the risk of losing that quarterback for nothing in free agency.
Players chosen after the first round don’t have full guarantees and make less up front than the first-rounders, but they don’t have a fifth-year option, which allows them to get to free agency one year earlier. After 2024, Purdy will only be three years away from free agency. We’ve seen midround picks such as Prescott and Russell Wilson parlay those accelerated timelines into massive, player-friendly deals.
What would a $325 million extension mean for San Francisco?
Almost inevitably, it would mean some semblance of cutbacks elsewhere around the roster. While the salary cap is more pliable than it is in the NBA or NHL, adding $65 million or so in new player costs to a roster is going to impact what a team can do elsewhere. Even beyond the cash impact of paying a player that much money, there are inevitable cap restrictions that impact rosters, even if a team structures the deal to have relatively low costs early.
Take the Bengals, for example, who needed to pay Joe Burrow a team-record deal last offseason. Cincinnati had been aggressive in free agency to build a Super Bowl contender around him, but as his deal approached, it prepared for a future in which it wouldn’t be able to spend as much around its quarterback. The Bengals used a first-round pick on safety Dax Hill, signed Nick Scott to a much smaller deal and let starting safeties Jessie Bates and Vonn Bell leave in free agency.
The move didn’t work, leading the Bengals to bring back Bell this offseason while moving on from Scott and shifting Hill to cornerback, but they don’t really have an ability to make major investments at the position at this point. Likewise, the team drafted edge rusher Myles Murphy in the first round of 2023 with the likelihood he’ll end up replacing either Sam Hubbard or Trey Hendrickson. Teams can prepare to save money, but there’s no guarantee the guys they draft will be as good as the ones who leave town.
The Chiefs moved in a different way. While Mahomes’ 10-year extension in 2020 was virtually unprecedented in terms of structure and scope, they were aggressive in moving on from veterans as their future Hall of Famer shifted from a rookie deal to a larger second contract. They moved on from Tyrann Mathieu and replaced him with a less expensive, younger safety in Justin Reid. They cut edge rusher Frank Clark and used a first-round pick on George Karlaftis. They traded away Tyreek Hill for draft picks and moved on from free agent addition Sammy Watkins, going younger and cheaper at wide receiver. At tackle, they let Eric Fisher leave, traded for Orlando Brown Jr., then let him leave in free agency when his price got too high. Kansas City still was able to make big investments — it re-signed Chris Jones, kept around Travis Kelce and added Jawaan Taylor in free agency — but it had to be more judicious after Mahomes got paid.
The 49ers already have major commitments coming due over the next two years. They have more than $319 million in cash going to their 2024 roster, the fourth-highest total of any team. Next year, they’re projected to pay out more than $230 million, which is the fifth-highest mark in the league. While they have more than $30 million in present-day cap space they can roll over to next year if unused, they still need to work on new contracts for a trio of young stars in Aiyuk, safety Talanoa Hufanga and linebacker Dre Greenlaw. All three are unrestricted free agents after the season.
In one way, there might be a natural ebb and flow to the finances of the roster on offense. Kittle is 31 and has two years left on the five-year, $75 million deal he signed in 2020. He’s still playing at a high level and is an immensely valuable player, but the attrition rate for tight ends on the wrong side of 30 is spectacularly high. If he suffers a significant injury or declines suddenly, the 49ers could choose to cut back at tight end, although it might be more likely they sign him to an extension over the next 12 months.
Likewise, while he’s a future Hall of Famer, left tackle Trent Williams is 36 years old. While there are three years and more than $77 million remaining on the contract he inked to rejoin the 49ers in 2021, none of that money is guaranteed. He hasn’t played a full season since 2013, and unlike Kittle, the 49ers conspicuously didn’t restructure his deal to create cap space this offseason, something they chose to do a year ago. Williams also didn’t report to training camp this week in search of a new deal, which could force the 49ers to make a tough decision in terms of future guarantees before they’re able to act on Purdy’s contract.
Meanwhile, Aiyuk is holding in to try to land a new deal, which would also limit San Francisco’s flexibility in the years to come. He was an elite performer a year ago, leading all wideouts in ESPN’s Receiver Tracking Metrics. At 26, he is younger than the other primary playmakers on this roster, which would seem to make him the most important one to keep around as Purdy enters his second deal.
Trading Aiyuk would make it easier to keep both Purdy and the other playmakers on the roster, but the time to do it was in April. Now, with the top of the wideout market having grown more expensive and the season approaching, a 49ers team that expects to win a Super Bowl probably won’t be able to get win-now playmakers in return for their star receiver. Trading him for picks now doesn’t make much sense. If they are going to trade Aiyuk, it would probably require them to franchise him next offseason before dealing him to another team.
Other players will be vulnerable. The 49ers could choose to move on from defensive tackle Javon Hargrave and a 2025 cap hit of more than $28 million after this season. They probably won’t keep Maliek Collins at a $10 million cap hold next year. In the question of what to do at wide receiver, they could retain Aiyuk and trade Samuel, who will be 29 next January and entering the final year of his extension. The decision to re-sign Jauan Jennings on a modest deal and use a first-round pick on Ricky Pearsall suggests one of the team’s star wide receivers is likely to be gone by the time the 49ers pay Purdy.
On the other hand, there is another team that has managed to pay a litany of key contributors on offense. The Eagles have handed out significant deals to a quarterback (Jalen Hurts), running back (Saquon Barkley), two wide receivers (A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith), a tight end (Dallas Goedert), two offensive tackles (Jordan Mailata and Lane Johnson) and a guard (Landon Dickerson). In all, they are spending more than $213 million in cash on their offense this year, making the Philadelphia offense the most expensive in NFL history.
While the Eagles aren’t spending as much on the defensive side of the ball, general manager Howie Roseman & Co. still have meaningful commitments there. They handed edge rusher Bryce Huff a big contract this offseason, and Josh Sweat is also on a significant deal. They retained Darius Slay and re-signed James Bradberry at cornerback last offseason, then brought back C.J. Gardner-Johnson on a multiyear deal this spring. I’d expect Slay and Bradberry to move on after the season after Philly used its top two draft picks on cornerbacks, but for one year, it was able to pay just about everybody on offense and a few key pieces on defense, too.
One reason why the Eagles were able to do that? Draft picks. After several trades with the Dolphins and Saints, they stocked up on the defensive side of the ball. They have three first-rounders in their defensive line rotation in former Georgia products Jalen Carter, Jordan Davis and Nolan Smith. They just added Quinyon Mitchell and Cooper DeJean with two top-40 picks in the secondary. We still have to see how some of those picks pan out, but on paper, the Eagles are preparing for a universe in which they’re cheaper but still have some promise on defense.
The 49ers made what might be the best draft pick since Mahomes when they landed Purdy, but it’s not going to be as easy for them to build through the draft. One of the biggest mistakes of the Lynch-Shanahan era might be the thing that keeps them from winning a Super Bowl with Purdy on a rookie deal.
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Why Tannenbaum would just ‘pay the bill’ to keep Aiyuk
Jeff Darlington and Mike Tannenbaum concur that the 49ers should do everything they can to keep Brandon Aiyuk in San Francisco amid rumors he could be traded to the Bills.
The ticking time bomb on the 49ers roster
I don’t fault the 49ers for trading three first-round picks to move up in the 2021 draft with the hopes of landing a franchise quarterback in Lance. It was clear Garoppolo limited what they could do on offense, and taking a swing on a passer with a rookie deal made a lot of sense given what they wanted to commit financially elsewhere on their roster. I’ve written a lot about Lance and what went wrong in San Francisco, but at the end of the day, that deal turned out to be disappointing.
On one hand, as 49ers fans have pointed out, the impact of missing on Lance was mitigated by landing on Purdy in Round 7 of the draft the following year. It’s certainly true that San Francisco would be in much worse shape if it hadn’t landed Purdy, but that also ignores the players who would be on the roster if the team had simply not traded those first-round picks to move up for a quarterback who started four games for them before being dealt away.
Those picks turned out to be very valuable players from several different angles. From Miami’s perspective, the three first-rounders it landed stocked its roster. While the Dolphins made several other trades after the 49ers deal, the picks they landed from San Francisco directly led to Waddle, Hill and Bradley Chubb becoming members of the organization. The 49ers probably wouldn’t have traded two of those first-rounders for veterans, and they also probably wouldn’t have acquired two wide receivers with those picks, but those are three star players who ended up on Miami’s roster as a result of the Lance deal.
The Dolphins sent those first-rounders away in various trades, and the teams that landed the picks also came away with significant additions. The Eagles moved down from No. 6 to No. 12 and then back up to No. 10 in the 2021 draft and eventually selected DeVonta Smith. The Chiefs used the first-rounder they got for Hill to move up and take cornerback Trent McDuffie, who starred each of the past two postseasons. The Broncos came up with a creative use of the first-rounder they got for Chubb, sending it to the Saints in return for the rights to coach Sean Payton. San Francisco might not have directly wanted Smith, McDuffie and Payton, but you get the idea.
If the Niners had just stayed put, landed the same draft picks and simply taken whoever came off the board at that spot, the results would have been more mixed. Guard Cole Strange, a 2022 first-rounder, hasn’t been great at guard for the Patriots, while 2023 first-rounder Bryan Bresee didn’t do much in his rookie season with the Saints along the defensive line. In 2021, though, the player chosen with the No. 12 overall pick was Micah Parsons. And yes, that means in a slightly different universe, the 49ers would be lining up Nick Bosa and Parsons on the same defensive line. Is that alone enough to push a Super Bowl their way over the ensuing three campaigns?
The 49ers also sent second-, third- and fourth-round picks to the Panthers in a much more successful deal for McCaffrey, also costing them additional draft capital in the process. While they’ve earned a series of midround picks as compensation for executives joining other franchises, they have been way below league average in terms of draft capital and return between 2021 and 2023.
We can’t envision exactly what a San Francisco team would look like had it held onto those picks, but we can see the impact of how it forces the franchise to spend elsewhere. Instead of having a second pass rusher to play alongside Bosa, when Javon Kinlaw struggled early in his career, the 49ers spent big to add Hargrave in free agency. Wanting a second edge rusher, they traded for Chase Young at the deadline last October. This offseason, they signed Leonard Floyd and Yetur Gross-Matos. Those two deals aren’t huge, but they don’t offer guaranteed production and come at a combined $19 million per season, much more than what even the top rookies get paid per year on their deals.
A lack of depth haunted the 49ers in the Super Bowl. Guard Jon Feliciano, a low-cost addition to help fill a starting spot on the roster, got injured during the game. He was replaced by fourth-round pick Spencer Burford, who blew a block on a key third down late in the game to end a drive. When Greenlaw tore his Achilles while running onto the field, the backup was Oren Burks, who allowed nine catches on the nine targets in his direction. With third-year corner Ambry Thomas struggling in the playoffs, they benched him and used veteran safety Logan Ryan, signed in December, as a nickel defender. Ryan was the closest defender to Mecole Hardman on the winning touchdown catch that ended the contest.
If the 49ers have those three first-round picks, are they using them on guards, off-ball linebackers and slot corners? Maybe not. By being able to use those selections on other positions, though, they would have been able to spend more money on backups or trade down and acquire additional selections. Every team is going to rely on a low-cost veteran here or there — the Chiefs got great production out of Mike Pennel in the Super Bowl — but the weak points on the San Francisco roster came back to bite the team in the biggest moments of its season.
Those issues aren’t going away. The players the 49ers could have drafted with those picks would be entering the primes of their respective careers, and it’s only going to get more expensive to replace them. As they prepare for a universe in which Purdy is very well compensated, it’s only going to be even more difficult for them to account for their missing picks by spreading money elsewhere around the roster. They have had exploitable weaknesses with a quarterback making peanuts; how can they make it work when their quarterback is making $65 million a year?
Could the 49ers instead move on from and trade Purdy?
One solution would be to employ a quarterback who isn’t making $65 million per season, but it would take a nearly unprecedented leap of faith from the 49ers.
Let’s go back to 2018. Inspired by a reader suggestion, I wrote an article about how teams that spent significant money to surround their quarterbacks on rookie contracts with talent could deal with that player’s inevitable raise by changing the quarterback as opposed to the talent. Replacing the passer with another QB on a rookie deal would allow a team to continue spending heavily on receivers and offensive linemen, enjoying the fruits of the NFL’s most popular philosophy.
That would also require a team to take on the risk of replacing its already successful incumbent at one of the most important positions in sports. I didn’t come to the conclusion this was the right idea, a likely path a team should take or something I would ever believe a team would be brave enough to attempt, but it’s at least a path worth discussing.
The team that came up most often in that 2018 article was the Rams, and the team wasn’t happy about the idea of Goff being a “system quarterback.” (He wasn’t and isn’t.) The night the article was published, Goff produced what might still be his best game as a pro: He threw for 465 yards with five touchdowns and a perfect passer rating in a win over the Vikings. Five months later, he had the Rams in the Super Bowl. That offseason, L.A. executive Kevin Demoff told a panel at the Sloan Sports Conference that my “goal in life was to get Jared Goff traded.”
And then two years after that, Sean McVay suddenly grew sick of Goff’s limitations. The Rams started John Wolford over Goff (who was returning from a finger injury but healthy enough to be on the active roster) in a playoff game over the Seahawks, only for Goff to lead the team to a victory when Wolford went down. After the season, the Rams traded Goff to the Lions as salary ballast in a massive trade for Matthew Stafford. L.A. promptly won a Super Bowl.
Now, the Rams didn’t do what I suggested in that column. They signed Goff to an extension before changing their minds about him, and when they traded him, they acquired another passer on a veteran deal. The argument about quarterbacks on rookie deals still applies, though: What’s appealing at a huge discount might not be quite as desirable when a team is paying the market price. Paying a lot of money for a quarterback, even when he’s great, eventually requires a team to make cutbacks elsewhere. The Rams won a Super Bowl with Stafford, but they had to clear the books beyond their top three stars after the 2022 season and start over.
Before I go any further, I’ll be very clear. I don’t think the 49ers should trade Purdy, even as he’s about to get more expensive. I don’t think they will. I don’t think they’ll even have a serious conversation about doing so. Shanahan and Lynch, especially after whiffing on Lance, likely will feel more confident about their abilities to find solutions at running back, wide receiver, left tackle and edge rusher than they will at landing another Purdy for peanuts.
With that being said, if there was ever an example of a team that was able to get by as they moved on from an expensive, middling quarterback to one who was less-heralded but cheaper, wouldn’t it be these 49ers? Garoppolo’s injury woes and limited ceiling didn’t make him a value on his extension with the 49ers, and while it would have been crazy for them to move on from Garoppolo and start a seventh-round pick as a plan, that’s how things have worked in practice.
I can hear what you’re saying, and you’re right: The 49ers can’t just draft another quarterback in Round 7 and expect to land the second coming of Purdy. I agree. That’s true of every spot on their roster: They can’t expect to trade Aiyuk and assume Pearsall will step in as a ready-made replacement. The idea of letting Purdy leave for nothing and replacing him with the 15th-best quarterback in the draft is foolish.
That’s not the path espoused in that article from 2018, though. If the 49ers decided they wanted to move on from Purdy, they would presumably be able to trade him for some meaningful amount of draft capital. There would be franchises skeptical of San Francisco moving on from a guy who looks like an elite quarterback and worry he’s a Shanahan-fed creation, but what would Purdy fetch on the trade market if the franchise wanted to deal him next year? In a league desperate for great quarterback play inside the pocket, wouldn’t a team in the top 10 be willing to trade its first-round pick and more for a 25-year-old Purdy?
Those picks would replenish some of the missing draft capital from the Lance and McCaffrey trades and give the 49ers significant ammunition to land a quarterback to replace Purdy in the draft. No quarterback is a sure thing, but if there’s a guy in the top 20 Shanahan feels confident about adding to the roster, they would be in position to land that quarterback with the capital they would get. We know Shanahan wanted to take a bigger swing on a higher-upside quarterback when he traded for Lance; could he rekindle that interest if they move on from Purdy?
The comparison isn’t between Purdy and another seventh-round pick. If we assume a team gets a significant return for Purdy, the calculus is entirely different. Let’s assume first- and second-round picks. It’s between Purdy and a first-round pick, wherever the team drafts the replacement for Purdy and about $60 million more to work with around its roster. As an example from this offseason, it could be the difference between Purdy and Bo Nix, Christian Wilkins, Stefon Diggs and Xavier McKinney.
The 49ers could use a first-round pick on a quarterback. Hell, they could draft three quarterbacks to try to replace Purdy. They could keep the big four playmakers around for another three years without sacrificing the rest of the roster. Lynch could continue to add big-ticket free agents on the defensive side of the ball to surround Bosa and Fred Warner. As we’ve seen during the Purdy era, having a bargain at quarterback allows teams to spend where needed in multiple spots across the roster.
And while moving on from Purdy would feel like an impossibly risky proposition, how many teams have signed quarterbacks who weren’t Hall of Fame-caliber players to a second contract in the slotted draft era and felt good about the decision years later? The Rams moved on from Goff less than two years after signing him to his extension. The Eagles traded Carson Wentz on the same timeframe. The Dolphins salary-dumped Ryan Tannehill on the Titans. Russell Wilson played well, but he never made it back to the conference title game after signing his extension with the Seahawks. Andy Dalton didn’t get to a championship game. Stafford didn’t win a playoff game on his second deal before being sent to the Rams. Derek Carr never won a playoff game with the Raiders before they cut him in advance of his third deal becoming guaranteed.
It’s tough to look at the second contracts for Colin Kaepernick, Andrew Luck and Deshaun Watson given the unique circumstances around each player, but none of those three players was as impactful on their second contract as they were on their rookie deals. The only clear victories from those deals in terms of players who weren’t perennial MVP candidates are Cam Newton and Matt Ryan, both of whom won MVP awards and NFC titles in their best seasons.
Knowing whether a player fits into that category or the tier of true superstars (guys like Mahomes and Allen) isn’t as easy as I’m making it out to seem, and it’s entirely possible Purdy is on that Hall of Fame track given how he has played through two seasons. Personally, as I mentioned earlier, I would be terrified of trading him and would find other ways to make my roster construction work. At the same time, it’s clear the optimal NFL roster construction is to have a good quarterback on a rookie deal and surround him with as much talent as possible. Purdy proves it’s both easier to find that quarterback than you might think and tougher to replace him once he succeeds.