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Brock Purdy did not play hardball, the 49ers returned the favor, and nobody had to go running to social media, skip practice, or make multiple passive-aggressive trade threats.
How boring. How undramatic. How unlike the 49ers’ big and painful negotiations of the last few years. How logical. How timely. How relieved Kyle Shanahan and John Lynch have to be.
And how ideal for a team that definitely needed to make its starting quarterback feel happy in time for the start of OTAs later this month and for Purdy to gain the generational wealth that he was due — and to do it without any inflicting or incurring any emotional wreckage.
I’m sure a lot happened on the way to the five-year, $265-million extension through the 2030 season that Purdy and the 49ers have agreed on, according to multiple reports. These things are never simple. I’m sure there were interesting details and potential flare-ups. That’s a ton of financial commitment from Jed York in an offseason that has featured a whole lot of 49ers cost-cutting. And Purdy could’ve demanded even more. It can be argued that, in totality, he absolutely took less than his full market rate.
But that’s also the point: This is a fair deal that underlines Purdy’s premium standing in this organization but also doesn’t overload the 49ers’ payroll. It backs up Shanahan and Lynch’s organizational construct but doesn’t impinge on York and Paraag Marathe’s fiscal plans.
If the 49ers had been tight-fisted and unresponsive in this one, they could’ve jeopardized the mood of the upcoming season the same way their long battles with Brandon Aiyuk and Trent Williams last season sent 2024 off-kilter. If Purdy had sought a record-breaking deal that he hasn’t yet earned, it could’ve split up his tight bond with Shanahan and made things uneasy in the locker room.
None of that happened. Purdy and the 49ers committed to each other right after the 49ers did a similarly logical deal with George Kittle. And once the 49ers eventually agree to an extension for Fred Warner, they can fly into the 2025 season with lighter spirits and heavier wallets (except for York).
Yes, the extension’s $53 million average annual value lifts Purdy into a tie with Jared Goff for the seventh-highest AAV in the league. The $181 million in total guarantees ranks eighth. If Purdy’s career flattens out, those could be problematic dollars.
But the new deal doesn’t actually start until 2026. Which means that Purdy’s 2025 contract for $5.3 million remains in place. As Lynch hinted a few times in recent months, that 2025 contract mattered in these talks (and having one more contracted year on the books was part of what bogged down the Aiyuk negotiations last spring and summer).
Purdy’s agent won’t like me doing this, but if you count this year’s salary (which I’m sure the 49ers are doing internally), it’s a six-year, $270.3-million deal — with a $45 million AAV.
But who really cares about that kind of deal-parsing? Once the extension kicks in next year, Purdy will still be only 26 and he’ll be making top-10 money. And by pushing the start until 2026 — the salary cap should be over $300 million by then and could go increase by $25 million or more each year from there — the 49ers are ensuring that Purdy’s cap hit will be quite manageable as a percentage of the annual payroll.
That’s how the 49ers and Purdy figured out how to do this, and that’s the compromise.
Purdy could’ve tried to reset the QB market, which most young QB1s try to do when their negotiating turn comes up. Purdy could’ve demanded to wipe away his 2025 contract. But he wanted this deal done now. And if he puts up two or three more Pro Bowl seasons, I’m sure that Purdy and the 49ers will figure out a way to reset his salary by 2028 or so — when he’ll still be in his 20s.
“Obviously, I’d like to get it done sooner rather than later, just so I can come back to work and get going with all the guys here,” Purdy said on locker-room clean-out day in January. “I’m not really sure what it’s all going to look like or entail. But I know that I’m the guy for this organization, and I can do what it takes to help lead us to where we want to go.”
There are national analysts and general nitpickers who can’t forget that Purdy was the last pick of the 2022 draft and that he’s barely over 6-feet and can’t throw the ball 70 mph through a rainstorm. And yes, there have been times, especially last season, when he lost Aiyuk, Christian McCaffrey, and others to injury, when Purdy has looked less than scintillating.
But even then, look at his numbers last season as his performance floor: 20 touchdown passes, 12 interceptions, 65.9% completion rate, 8.18 yards per attempt. Purdy ended up with a 96.1 passer rating, ranking 13th among qualifying quarterbacks and comfortably above the league average of 92.3. Again, that was the worst season of his career so far, with most of his top weapons missing for long stretches.
And let’s slot his standout 2023 performance as something close to Purdy’s early-career ceiling: 31 TD passes, 11 INTs, 69.4% completion rate, a league-best 9.6 yards per attempt, and a league-best 113.0 passer rating.
Average those two seasons out and Purdy is easily a top-10 QB, who probably won’t reach his QB prime for several more years and who fits Shanahan’s scheme perfectly. Oh, by the way, it’d be almost impossible for the 49ers to adequately replace him — or maybe trade three first-round picks for a rookie! Sounds great!
“Brock is the leader of our team,” Shanahan said after last season. “I’ve loved these three years with Brock. I plan on being with Brock here the whole time I’m here.”
There was no reason to test any of that in this negotiating period. I think the 49ers and Purdy both knew early on that they could almost pick the day for this deal. They still had to hammer it out, but they knew it wouldn’t get to the June minicamp or beyond. They knew there would be no drama.
Basically, neither the 49ers nor Purdy were dumb enough to mess this up. In this world, after what the 49ers went through last season, that’s much more of a compliment than it sounds like.