Brock Purdy: $60 Million?

Brock Purdy's fairy-tale journey, from very last player chosen in the NFL Draft to Super Bowl starting quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers, has been well-documented. Surrounded by the Niners' star-studded roster, he has put up numbers enviable by most of his peers. Nor have those stats been empy, either-- they are the byproduct of wins. Purdy's career record is 17-4. In his first (and, to date, only) full season as a starter, the 49ers went 12-5, clinched the top seed in the NFC, and reached the Super Bowl, falling inches short of triumphing over Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs.

All, to this point, idyllic. And as Purdy nears his fourth year of NFL service -- extension time -- the expectation is that he will be able to cash in on his success. ESPN's Bill Barnwell recently suggested that Purdy's new deal could be worth $65 million per year, and he is not alone. Tua Tagovailoa and Jordan Love, two quarterbacks with lesser resumes than Purdy, recently signed for $53 and $55 million annually, respectively, and the expectation is that by the time Purdy is eligible for an extension, his new deal will top the exploding quarterback market. But a worthy question must be asked: how much of Purdy's success is because of him?

For the man Purdy plays for -- head coach Kyle Shanahan -- has a history of performances like this. Regardless of the quarterback he's been saddled with, Shanahan has consistently overseen offenses that top the NFL. In 2009, Shanahan directed Matt Schaub to 4,700 passing yards and the tenth-most points in the NFL as the offensive coordinator for the Houston Texans. In 2012, now coordinating the Washington Redskins' offense, Shanahan guided Robert Griffin III to over 4,000 total yards and a 10-6 record; hampered by injuries (and skill), Griffin would go on to win just seven more games in his entire career. In 2016, Shanahan was the architect of the Atlanta Falcons' record-setting Super Bowl season, with Matt Ryan at the helm. In 2019, Jimmy Garoppolo went 13-3 and reached the Super Bowl as quarterback of Shanahan's San Francisco 49ers. Garoppolo went 38-17 in his Niners tenure, all under Shanahan. After leaving in free agency, he put up a 7-9 TD-INT ratio in seven games for the Raiders, got cut, and is now the backup quarterback for the Los Angeles Rams. Shanahan's Niners' offenses have been top 10 in offensive yards four of the last five years; the quarterbacks that have started games for him, in addition to Garoppolo and Purdy, include guys like C.J. Beathard, Nick Mullens, Trey Lance, and Sam Darnold.

Two other relevant points: almost without exception, all of the quarterbacks named above have achieved their greatest moments of success in Shanahan offenses. In several cases, their success has earned them an exorbitant contract from their next team, which is accompanied by struggles as they are now forced to operate human offenses. Garoppolo I mentioned; Sam Darnold, Jets and Panthers castaway, earned a $10 million contract from the Minnesota Vikings on the basis of twenty-eight completions for Kyle Shanahan. (Kevin O'Connell, Vikings head coach and offensive play-caller, runs a similar system to Shanahan.)

Second, these quarterbacks can't have significant success on their own. A good offense requires much more than one person. Wide receivers, offensive linemen, running backs all are necessary parts of dynamic offenses, and Shanahan's is no different. Julio Jones was a catalyst of the 2016 Atlanta offense. Deebo Samuel and George Kittle have been mainstays of the recent 49ers powerhouses. And those players are expensive, too. The top of the wide receiver market recently crossed $30 million annually, and the offensive tackle market trails just below that.

And thus we reach the crux of the question. The 49ers have a multitude of stars surrounding Purdy that they are paying handsomely, or are about to be. If Purdy does indeed take home $60 million, their ability to complement him with star NFL talent is severely hampered -- and consequently his, and their, success. Purdy is a very good quarterback, and operates Shanahan's system about as well as anyone ever has, but he is not an upper-echelon, game-changing talent such as Patrick Mahomes or Josh Allen. A poll of NFL coaches and staff placed him as the 12th best quarterback in the NFL, right above the king of unremarkable, Kirk Cousins, and below other players with less playoff success, such as Dak Prescott or Jared Goff. Currently, what makes him so valuable is his low salary. If he is paid as a top-of-the-line NFL talent, that value is erased, and the 49ers are paying a good but not great quarterback almost a quarter of the salary cap.

Kyle Shanahan has shown that he can consistently orchestrate offenses that pace the NFL, regardless of quarterback. He has been within a score of a Super Bowl victory three times, with three different quarterbacks at the helm. This isn't saying that Purdy can't win a Super Bowl. On the contrary, he absolutely could. But if he could, so could someone else.

When your head coach has so consistently made so much something out of nothing, it would be folly to pay that "nothing" like he is, indeed, "something". That seems unfairly harsh-- Purdy is very talented, and it's not quite as easy to find "very good" quarterbacks as I've made it sound. But in an era when the NFL's economic battlefield is so dreadfully competitive (and quarterbacks are so important), failing to leverage their greatest strength (not needing a great quarterback) would permanently limit their Super Bowl-threatening ceiling.