Are we sure Jared Goff is worth more than $50 million per year?
Because if he is, that’s going to be a problem for the 49ers.
San Francisco has long anticipated paying Brock Purdy, the team’s third-year quarterback, at the market rate starting in 2026.
But Goff just reset the market with a four-year, $212 million contract.
In this era of inflation, it’s difficult to gauge the price of anything. But it’s still pretty clear that Goff — an average starting quarterback in this league — isn’t worth more than Patrick Mahomes.
Or, to think of it another way — he’s not worth more than 20 percent of all the money the Lions can spend under the NFL’s salary cap.
I guess that’s the price of competence these days.
Best of luck to Goff and the Lions with all that.
And best of luck to the 49ers.
Goff completed 1.2 percent of his passes above expectation last season. In all, he produced a 76 EPA last year with a 60.3 QBR.
If you don’t know what those stats mean, it’s OK. It all sums up to Goff being good, but hardly great.
Purdy, in his first full year as a starter, was twice as good, posting a 175 EPA, 72.7 QBR, and 5.3 CPOE.
And let’s not pretend Purdy’s weapons were that much better than Goff, who had two excellent running backs, a strong offensive line, a top tight end, and one of the best receiving cores in the league last season. (Hope he enjoyed them — that level of insulation will be short-lived.)
Purdy isn’t going to demand $100 million a year, but, there’s no world where he is worth less than Goff.
So this new deal will require a bit of recalibration for the Niners’ front office.
It’s not that the 49ers cannot afford a new Purdy deal. No, it’s a question of if they want to budget for Purdy at the going rate.
Don’t get me wrong, Purdy was outstanding last season — a legitimate MVP candidate — but when you pay one player nearly a quarter of the salary cap, he must be transcendent. We’re talking about the kind of player that can take average talent around him and turn it into Super-Bowl-caliber weapons, or score so many points that you can afford to go cheap on defense.
Maybe Purdy’s that guy.
But after a season-and-a-half at the helm of the Niners offense, is anyone dead-set certain he is?
The 49ers and Purdy have the luxury of at least one more season in which the young quarterback can prove his worth. Another campaign like 2023 and Purdy’s worth will be something close to indisputable.
But anything less than that and the 49ers will have a tough call to make — and the more advisable it would be to wait as long as possible to sign Purdy to a new contract.
That is if they sign him at all.
Everything is going Purdy’s way right now. Not only are other teams paying lesser quarterbacks absurd money, but Kyle Shanahan’s quarterback history helps him, too.
After missing out on his preferred option — Kirk Cousins — and living through Jimmy Garoppolo and Trey Lance, how much is Purdy’s Cousins-like competence worth to Shanahan?
Who needs the market when you have those predecessors?
And with the step-change that came with Goff’s contract Monday, there’s little question that Purdy will be paid big bucks in the not-too-distant future. No discounts are coming San Francisco’s way.
But, even as the cost of competence keeps increasing, the right business decision for the 49ers would be to wait as long as possible to pay Purdy. They might even need to put him on the Cousins path from his time in Washington, the team franchise tagged the quarterback twice.
The Niners are going to have to restructure the entire roster around Purdy’s next contract. That’s always been unavoidable given how comically cheap Purdy (roughly $1 million a season over the next two years) is.
A larger sample size of play before they pay wouldn’t hurt.
Yes, Purdy can increase his value even more. You would welcome that as the 49ers. The cost increase would be marginal.
But Purdy can also disqualify himself in the next two years and save the 49ers from themselves.
Don’t pretend as if contracts as large as the one Purdy is currently in line to receive — the kind Goff received — can kneecap an entire franchise.
How are things going for the Browns, who in a fit of quarterback desperation paid Deshaun Watson (amid everything that was going on with him) a guaranteed $230 million? Do you think the Giants regret paying Daniel Jones $40 million? Things in Arizona and Philadelphia seem on edge (albeit on different sides of the cliff). The Chargers fired everyone and are rebuilding. You can’t even say the name Russell Wilson in Denver anymore.
And, sure, it can work out, too, but there are more horror stories than fairy tales.
The 49ers are 28 games into Purdy’s career as the team’s quarterback. He’s been incredible.
But is it ridiculous to think he should play at something close to 50 games at that level before the Niners — or anyone else — pays him $50-plus million a season?
