The $60 million man? Running the numbers on Brock Purdy’s 49ers contract

As far as the general public’s perception goes, it was a great weekend for 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy — and he didn’t even play.

The failures of Purdy’s contemporaries made it so. The Los Angeles Chargers’ Justin Herbert and the Green Bay Packers’ Jordan Love, both of whom are playing on mega deals worth more than $50 million annually, delivered dismal outings in postseason losses. Then, the Minnesota Vikings’ Sam Darnold — recently floated as a more cost-effective future option for the 49ers than Purdy — also showcased disastrously bad football in a blowout defeat.

It turns out that playing quarterback in the NFL playoffs is not easy, even if Purdy might have made it look that way at times over the two previous seasons. Those have featured four 49ers wins and an overtime loss in the Super Bowl against the Kansas City Chiefs during which Purdy even edged out the great Patrick Mahomes in per-play efficiency.

Playoff expected points added (EPA) per play since 2018, top QBs

Minimum 197 drop backs (Purdy’s playoff total)

Of course, the 49ers didn’t qualify for the playoffs this season. That was enough to muddy the discourse around Purdy — even though his play remained generally good (he fell from No. 1 to No. 7 in QBR) — just as he became eligible to sign a lucrative contract extension of his own.

Where will Purdy’s contract land? Does he have standing to ask for more than $60 million annually to reset the market in terms of average per year (APY)? How will the 49ers respond and work to fit Purdy’s big deal into their larger salary-cap structure?

Those are the simmering questions fueling a messy discourse. Reactions to a contract projection for Purdy, which we’ve prepared below, will inevitably devolve into a virtual shouting match.

Well, let that shouting match begin. Here’s a five-year extension for Purdy worth $305 million — or $61 million per year. By APY, that would be the richest contract in NFL history, but it does follow the 49ers’ recent backloaded big-money blueprint — executed most recently with the contract for receiver Brandon Aiyuk — to keep early-term salary-cap hits relatively low.

All fully guaranteed money is color-shaded. The prorated signing bonus (PRTD SB) is shaded in blue. The first guaranteed option bonus (OPT BON 1) is shaded in green, and the second guaranteed option bonus (OPT BON 2) is shaded in teal.

By rule, signing bonuses and certain option bonuses can be prorated for up to five years against the cap, so the 49ers can utilize both in the staggered structure illustrated above to keep Purdy’s 2025 cap hit at about $15 million. Over the past half-decade, they’ve deftly surfed the wave of a rising salary cap, carrying cap space from year to year while pushing expenses into a future with higher limits. Think of it as a zero-interest loan against the cap.

Put short, the 49ers do have room to continue their careful work as they craft this deal with Purdy. We can begin our closer look with APY, which is the headline-generator.

Top QB contracts by APY

Purdy’s résumé suggests that resetting the APY market is possible. No one else on that list has finished No. 1 in QBR, a statistic that does its best to disentangle QB performance from team factors as much as possible (Purdy has also ranked No. 1 in EPA per play since joining the league). Only Burrow, whose team has also lost a Super Bowl, has more playoff wins (five). Purdy’s four postseason victories equal the total notched by Prescott, Love, Lawrence, and Tagovailoa combined.

It’s vital to note that APY — while important to players, agents, and headline writers — isn’t necessarily an indicator of a strong deal, since the annual average is almost always inflated by non-guaranteed numbers.

An exception has been the Cleveland Browns’ pact with Deshaun Watson. The entirety of his $230 million contract, signed in 2022, was fully guaranteed. It was so unprecedented that, unlike essentially every other big-money QB deal, it hasn’t become contract-setting precedent. Burrow and Lawrence, at $146.5 and $142 million in fully-guaranteed money, respectively, serve as realistic reference points for new QB contracts like Purdy’s.

Top QB contracts by fully-guaranteed money

The contract projection for Purdy illustrated above yields this formula: $1.1 million 2025 base salary + $1.2 million 2026 base salary + $1.3 million 2027 base salary + $70 million signing bonus + $40 million guaranteed 2026 option bonus + $30 million guaranteed 2027 option bonus = $143.6 million fully guaranteed.

That’s just above Lawrence but still below Burrow, the one quarterback on the top-five lists with a postseason résumé rivaling Purdy’s. It also puts Purdy’s Year One cash flow at just over $70 million — comparable to Love and Detroit Lions QB Jared Goff, who have top-rate $75 million and $73 million signing bonuses, respectively.

It’s mandatory to note that superstars like Jackson, Mahomes, and the Buffalo Bills’ Josh Allen are lower on the financial pecking order, but that just reinforces how the market has naturally escalated. Simply solid quarterbacks — with pronounced weaknesses — have inked contracts exceeding the size of those superstars’ deals in recent years. Prescott, the latest to sign, hit $60 million APY on a front-loaded deal at the start of the 2024 season.

“The market is what the market is,” 49ers owner Jed York said last spring with a shrug. “When we signed Jimmy [Garoppolo] so many years ago, it was the largest deal in the history of the NFL for three minutes. We paid Jimmy $26 or $27 [million], and the market has just changed. Whether I like it or not, that’s what the market is and you have to accept the reality of the world. And to me, quarterback is not just the most important position in football, but all of sports and those guys should be paid a lot of money.”

Relative to most other quarterbacks, Purdy’s résumé has few pronounced weaknesses. His 6-1 height almost certainly contributed to his slide to the very end of the 2022 NFL Draft, but Purdy has managed to deliver superb efficiency despite that, thanks in large part to a top-notch physical trait — his explosive movement in and around the pocket (perhaps best measured by the 10-yard split). Purdy’s most notable struggles have come in wet conditions. Performance in such games is illustrated on the left side of the graphic below.

It doesn’t seem that this three-game collection of struggles is a flaw that can derail an entire QB market trend, especially since Purdy has been effective in his two wet-weather playoff games. Those were wins over the Seattle Seahawks and Packers.

Perhaps the best way to project how this negotiation will end is to look at the entire forest and not just individual trees. Speaking last week, 49ers general manager John Lynch and coach Kyle Shanahan took this type of zoomed-out view as they praised Purdy in response to questions about his contract.

“I think what we know about Brock is that he’s our guy,” Lynch said. “We have interest in Brock being around here for a long, long time. He’s done so much for our organization.”

Added Shanahan: “I plan on being with Brock here the entire time I’m here. We’re capable of winning a Super Bowl with him. We almost did. I know he’s capable of getting the Niners a Super Bowl in the future.”

There was no beating around the bush from the 49ers’ top two decision makers. And it’s worth noting that those two comments came before this past weekend, which saw those three veteran quarterbacks — two of whom are playing on contracts that rank in the top five of APY — suffer playoff implosions.

But those outside failures were no more than fuel for the discourse. It seems clear that the 49ers’ brass — outside discussion be damned — has long known that Purdy is their guy. And, in a coincidental nod to a philosophical pillar of legendary coach Bill Walsh, they certainly don’t care about where Purdy was drafted. Shanahan and Lynch seem solely focused on how the 25-year-old has produced and how he projects to grow in the years ahead.

Luckily they have a quarterback who seems willing to focus on those same things.

“More than anything, I want to be able to handle business the right way and do it in a respectable manner and get back to my team as fast as I can to get going,” Purdy said last week of contract negotiations. “That’s my mindset, my focus.”