All 49ers

Does 49ers QB Brock Purdy Need Expensive Wide Receivers to Succeed?

Deebo Samuel averages $23.8 million annually and Brandon Aiyuk wants a contract extension that is worth an average of roughly $30 million per season. And they're worth that money in the current market. But the 49ers might be wise to spend that money elsewhere.

Grant Cohn

Former Iowa State quarterback and San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy passes the ball during a drill at the Brock Purdy Youth Football camp at Jack Trice Stadium football practice field on Saturday, June 22, 2024, in Ames, Iowa
Former Iowa State quarterback and San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy passes the ball during a drill at the Brock Purdy Youth Football camp at Jack Trice Stadium football practice field on Saturday, June 22, 2024, in Ames, Iowa / Nirmalendu Majumdar/Ames Tribune / USA
In this story:

For the past few years, the 49ers' roster blueprint has been extremely specific: Go cheap at quarterback and spend big practically everywhere else.

In a year, that blueprint will become defunct when the 49ers make Brock Purdy one of the highest-paid players in the NFL. And then they'll have to figure out where to save money on the roster once Purdy becomes expensive.

The 49ers also like to go cheap on their offensive line, but doing so could be a bad idea when the quarterback is making more than $60 million per season. The 49ers probably should protect their investment. And maybe they should stop spending so much money on wide receivers.

Deebo Samuel averages $23.8 million annually and Brandon Aiyuk wants a contract extension that is worth an average of roughly $30 million per season. And they're worth that money in the current market. But the 49ers might be wise to spend that money elsewhere.

The 49ers already have the best receiving running back in Christian McCaffrey, the second-best receiving tight end in George Kittle and an excellent slot receiver in Jauan Jennings. Do they really need to spend more than $50 million per season on two wide receivers who struggled in the playoffs this year?

In three playoff games, Purdy's passer rating was 60.4 when he targeted Samuel and 87.4 when he targeted Aiyuk. Meanwhile, Purdy's passer rating was 104.1 when he targeted McCaffrey, 114.9 when he targeted Kittle and 127.4 when he targeted Jennings.

Purdy has great chemistry with those three, and none of them make more than $20 million per season. Plus the 49ers just spent a first-round pick on wide receiver Ricky Pearsall who will make roughly $3 million per season for the next four years.

Aiyuk and Samuel are two excellent players the 49ers would be wise to trade next year.

Published
Grant Cohn

GRANT COHN

Grant Cohn has covered the San Francisco 49ers daily since 2011. He spent the first nine years of his career with the Santa Rosa Press Democrat where he wrote the Inside the 49ers blog and covered famous coaches and athletes such as Jim Harbaugh, Colin Kaepernick and Patrick Willis. In 2012, Inside the 49ers won Sports Blog of the Year from the Peninsula Press Club. In 2020, Cohn joined FanNation and began writing All49ers. In addition, he created a YouTube channel which has become the go-to place on YouTube to consume 49ers content. Cohn's channel typically generates roughly 3.5 million viewers per month, while the 49ers' official YouTube channel generates roughly 1.5 million viewers per month. Cohn live streams almost every day and posts videos hourly during the football season. Cohn is committed to asking the questions that 49ers fans want answered, and providing the most honest and interactive coverage in the country. His loyalty is to the reader and the viewer, not the team or any player or coach. Cohn is a new-age multimedia journalist with an old-school mentality, because his father is Lowell Cohn, the legendary sports columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle from 1979 to 1993. The two have a live podcast every Tuesday. Grant Cohn grew up in Oakland and studied English Literature at UCLA from 2006 to 2010. He currently lives in Oakland with his wife.

Home/News