The full breakdown of Brock Purdy’s $265 million contract are in via Mike Florio of PFT which gives us the opportunity to a more thorough look at the contract and see how it really compares with the other players earning somewhere in the ballpark of $50 to $55 million per year.

The primary thing I really wanted to focus on with this contract is the cash flow within the contract. Purdy’s new money break down has some good and bad points and probably indicates where some concessions may have been made by both sides to get this deal done.

The initial numbers for Purdy are ok. He will receive a raise of $35.754 million this year which is stronger than Jalen Hurt’s $20M raise on his contract and Tua Tagovailoa’s $19.954 million raise in the year of signing on his contract extension. The numbers fall short of Justin Herbert at $40 million and Trevor Lawrence at $45.158 million. The number significantly trails Jared Goff ($52 million), Jordan Love ($68 million) and Joe Burrow ($76.2 million). Also somewhat surprising is that his signing bonus is lower than that of teammate Nick Bosa who received $50 million.

By the end of year one Purdy will have earned $82.75 million which is significantly more than the $45 million or so he would have earned on the franchise tag and also moves him way up in class where he trails just Burrow and Herbert who are both $100M+ earners through two years. Looking at the 49ers payroll which is very high this year relative to 2026 it makes sense for the 49ers to have this type of structure to help them mitigate the costs of all these extensions they have done this year.

Year 2 is where Purdy’s side makes the biggest concession. His salary in 2027 plummets to $27.25 million which drops his two year new money down to $110 million. While this is well above what two franchise tags would have been it trails the field by at least $14 million with the exception of Hurts’ who had a two year payout of $102 million.

Year 3 sees Purdy move back into the pack with $165.05 million in earnings which just sneaks past Goff and only trails Burrow, Love, and Lawrence. He maintains that position un year 4.

Here is the breakdown of the players used for comparison in a table form for analysis.

Given the overall numbers in the contract I do think it is fair to question whether he should have held strong on receiving a four year versus five year contract. Tua, Love, and Goff all received 4 year deals and I am not sure the numbers here pushed enough past the market to justify that fifth year.

Too much is probably going to be made about the guaranteed number in this contract. The $182.55 million in injury protection is not as high as some of the star players and the $100 million fully guaranteed at signing is below Kyler Murray, but all of these other players had high existing salaries in their prior contracts that essentially became part of the guarantee. This tracks with Hurts in terms of new guaranteed money and is above the other players so I think it is mainly in line. While it really only matters for optics, Purdy probably should have pushed for $111 million in full guarantees just to surpass Hurts’ $110 million.

The 49ers got their standard contract “win” with the large per game bonuses attached to the deal. Only two other players (Love and Tua) had per gamers and the 1.6% of total contract value is higher than any others. You are going to be stuck with these with the 49ers but again it might be an area where it could have come in a slight bit lower.

The salary cap breakdown is interesting, assuming the report is correct about the lack of options at the end of the contract. At signing the team is only factoring in partial salary conversions (paid as option bonuses) which almost feels like a bit of a hedge. It may also have to do with certain rules that come into play with bonus allocations that could extend beyond 2030  but it does seem that the team wants some options within the contract.

Assuming the contract plays out as intended and all trades are off the table you would be looking at a dead money number of $55.274 million in 2029 of which $7.154 million would be subject to offsets. That would be a reasonable figure for the 49ers if things went south with Purdy. This feels like a contract where they are comfortable with the low enough cap figures for 2025 through 2027 and will then make the decision in 2028 about having his cap number spike and potentially exiting the contract or doubling down on the contract through restructuring and then maximizing the time they have to work out an extension in 2029 or 2030.

A lot was made earlier this week about Purdy receiving a no trade clause. To me that is a meaningless thing. Almost all higher paid QB’s have no trade clauses these days and realistically they control their own destination anyway as no team is trading for a player who does not want to be there.

The biggest thing to me that comes out of this contract is that it seems clear that 31 teams in the NFL are considering the Dak Prescott mega extension with the Cowboys as an outlier contract. Prescott landed arguably the best contract in modern times when he leveraged the Cowboys into a $60 million per year contract extension. Josh Allen’s recently reworked contract did not peg to that number but there were extenuating circumstances there considering how many years the Bills ripped up on his prior contract. There really was no excuse in this case.

If we go back historically and look at QB contracts, the new top end contract becomes the new point where teams and agents are working from. In many years we saw games of leapfrog where every QB gets just a little more than the last one to sign. Purdy doesn’t have the background of some of those players but there were certainly some years where a QB signing an extension post Prescott would have earned at the least $60.1 million per year.  

Even if we are factoring in Purdy as a non market-setter you would think that he would have been around $57 to $58 million a year as $2 to $3 million a year less than the top guy is historically what the market would be at.

QB growth this year looks to be lacking. The top 10 players average $54.3 million a year, which is up just 2% from last year, the lowest year over year growth since at least 2012. That is partially attributed to last year having a few extensions but the 25% growth the last three years is the lowest it has been since 2017. The NFL really needs some of the young QBs to pan out and the market needs more people to be as aggressive as Prescott to move this market forward.

Back to Purdy and SF, I think the 49ers are probably happy with this contract. I think tying it into the $55M market and getting the fifth year without any added guarantees or early cash flow concessions is a win for them as is getting a deal done with no drama. It is certainly a solid contract for Purdy but all told I thought SF would have had to pay a bit more. This feels much more like the way the 49ers looked at Colin Kaepernick years ago than the way they looked at Jimmy Garoppolo when they made him the highest paid player in the NFL after a few games or the way they threw away years of draft picks to randomly select the 3^rd best prospect in a draft which would up being Trey Lance.

In any case this is a monster year for the 49ers. They have invested a lot of money this year on and have a lot of roster space occupied by 3^rd+ contract players. That is a risky way to build in the NFL. They need Purdy to continue his growth to get to the level where more people think he is capable of carrying a football team. Fairly or unfairly he is going to get blamed if they don’t win even if it is because the injury bug hits the 49ers older players or players just look a step slower. This is definitely one of the teams I am most interested in watching this year because of all of the expectations that they should have on them.