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The Athletic Says the 49ers Could Pay Brock Purdy $65 Million Per Year

I have a feeling the 49ers will offer Purdy more like $50 million per season -- slightly below market rate for a franchise quarterback.

Grant Cohn

Oct 27, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy (13) throws the ball during warm ups before the game against the Dallas Cowboys at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kelley L Cox-Imagn Images
Oct 27, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy (13) throws the ball during warm ups before the game against the Dallas Cowboys at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kelley L Cox-Imagn Images / Kelley L Cox-Imagn Images
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It seems like the 49ers have made up their minds about Brock Purdy.

After 35 career starts, Purdy seemingly has convinced them that he's their franchise quarterback despite a statistical regression this season and a 4-4 record. Still, some people such as The Athletic's Matt Barrows think Purdy is playing some of the best football of his career, considering he's playing without Christian McCaffrey, who was the best player on last season's team.

'If Purdy plays the second half of the season like he played the first, he will get whatever the going rate for a top-tier quarterback is at that moment," Barrows writes.

And that going rate could be $65 million per season once the salary cap increases as it's expected to.

Purdy is a very good quarterback, but paying him $65 million would be a mistake when Patrick Mahomes gets paid $45 million per season. The 49ers can't beat the Chiefs while paying Purdy 1/45th of Mahomes' salary, so how can they beat Kansas City if they're paying Purdy $20 million more per season than the Chiefs pay Mahomes?

Instead of paying Purdy $65 million per season, they could let him play out the fourth and final season of his rookie contract and then franchise tag him in 2026 and 2027. They have options. They don't have to be like the Cowboys who paid Dak Prescott $60 million per season. Prescott is good, but not nearly that good.

I have a feeling the 49ers will offer Purdy more like $50 million per season -- slightly below market rate for a franchise quarterback. And if he balks at it, they always can trade for Kirk Cousins, who gets paid $45 million per season.

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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.

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