Brock Purdy's contract is worked out two months before camp and he couldn't be happier.
What else would you expect from a man who entered the NFL as Mr. Irrelevant, worked his way onto the 49ers roster, rose to the starting job, led his team to a Super Bowl appearance and after three years of making pennies in comparison to his counterparts, finally signed a contract worth $265 million over five years?
"For me what I realized is it just doesn’t happen overnight," Purdy said Wednesday. "You’ve got to go through good, bad, tough times, the hard workouts, all the things to get there. And how you respond to adversity and all the things. Man, am I grateful to be able to just stay the course, and this is just my story. I haven’t tried to live out anybody else’s story. It’s just been where God has had me and I’ve been all in on it. I’m extremely grateful to be in this position.
“It fires me up more than anything to want to continue to get better and help this organization win. Nothing is set in stone yet in terms of how we are as a team or this year or the future going forward, it’s every single day I have to come in and be present and work to earn success and just do my part for this team. I’m excited.”
The only guarantee in Purdy's (and the 49ers') future is that he'll soon be a rich man. At signing, $100 million of his new deal is guaranteed. He already earned $40 million in a signing bonus and is guaranteed a grand total of $181 million, going from a contract that paid him less than $1 million per year on average to an exponentially higher total.
Lost in those numbers is where Purdy made concessions to help the 49ers build for their future. He isn't the highest-paid quarterback in the NFL, ranking below six other signal-callers in average annual value. As Purdy saw it, there was more value in preserving the 49ers' ability to surround him with talent than in trying "to take every penny for myself."
“I think where we ended up was exactly where we needed to be," Purdy said of negotiations with San Francisco. "I’m extremely happy with where we ended and I know the Niners are, too. With that being said, for me it’s all about football now. However they use the cap space and all that kind of stuff, that’s not my job. My job is to now go and win games and lead this team.”
Winning is far from guaranteed in this league, a lesson Purdy learned in 2024. As injuries ravaged those around him, Purdy found the going to be increasingly difficult as the 49ers limped to a 6-11 finish. Plenty of roster turnover has followed, a necessary outcome for a team that needed to retool less than two years after reaching the Super Bowl.
Purdy's negotiation might have provided a breath of fresh air to the 49ers amid a transitional offseason. Instead of worrying about whether they'll keep a top target like they did with Brandon Aiyuk in the summer of 2024, Purdy and the 49ers got his deal done with time to spare.
That alone should benefit them as they turn their focus toward preparing for the 2025 season.
“I feel like every year there sort of has been someone that was like, man, you’d like to get them done, and it’s gone on pretty late," Purdy said. "Whether that has affected the locker room or not, not really sure, I don’t want to just pinpoint something. But this year, having the guys done and being able to get back to work and be around the guys in the locker room and build our culture and standard really from the ground up with all the new guys we have, it’s been pretty cool. Everybody’s bought in right now, and we’re excited obviously to do more team activities as we move along the offseason.
"It’s hard to explain, but the young guys, the older guys, everybody is bringing it right now. I think it’s just so important that we’re around each other a lot doing little different activities and continuing to build chemistry, like that’s the kind of stuff that matters when you get late in the season and things get tough and you go through some tough things as a team. You want to be able to know the guy next to you and what he’s about and that he’s going to have your back. Having the contract stuff done, it’s been a huge blessing for the whole team and organization.”
With the ink drying on his contract and tens of millions headed toward his bank account, Purdy has accomplished two significant goals in his once-unlikely NFL career. There's no need to explain what stands atop that list going forward. Now, he can set his sights on achieving it.