From underdog to $265 million QB, Brock Purdy faces heightened expectations

The biggest lingering question of the 49ers’ offseason has been answered — in resounding, emphatic, quarter-billion-dollar fashion.

Brock Purdy, who went from the final pick in the 2022 NFL Draft to a Pro Bowl and Super Bowl quarterback, will now be paid like one, agreeing to a five-year, $265 million deal that ties him for the seventh-highest-paid player in the league at $53 million a year.

Purdy, 25, quickly moves from one end of the quarterback expectations spectrum to the other. Instead of being a plucky underdog from Iowa State who went 5-0 as a rookie and helped the 49ers to the Super Bowl in his second season, he now has the burden of being paid like a franchise quarterback, and the high standard of consistent elite-level play that comes with that.

For San Francisco, plagued by injuries around Purdy in a disappointing 6-11 season last year, the challenge now changes as well. It was one thing to get to the Super Bowl with a bargain quarterback just 15 months ago, when the 49ers were close enough to victory to have an overtime lead on the Chiefs before Patrick Mahomes pulled out the win. But moving forward, Purdy will take up a huge chunk of the 49ers’ salary cap, making it harder to keep him surrounded with championship-level talent.

Already, the 49ers have seen key pieces of their Super Bowl team go elsewhere. Receiver Deebo Samuel was traded to the Commanders, guard Aaron Banks signed with the Packers, cornerback Charvarius Ward signed with the Colts, and linebacker Dre Greenlaw and safety Talanoa Hufanga signed with the Broncos, among other departures.

San Francisco is the oddsmakers’ favorite to win the NFC West, with an over-under of 10.5 wins, but that’s only one win more than the defending champion Rams, and two more than the Seahawks and Cardinals, both keen on getting back to the playoffs. Getting running back Christian McCaffrey, who was limited by injuries to four games last season, should help Purdy get San Francisco’s offense back to form.

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Can Purdy & Co. assert themselves as the team to beat again in their division? They open with a relatively easy four-game stretch — at Seattle, at New Orleans, home vs. Arizona and Jacksonville — before a Week 5 Thursday night showdown with the Rams in Los Angeles. That game figures to put one team or the other in the driver’s seat for the division lead.

Today’s NFL economy requires teams to lock up promising young quarterbacks before they’ve fully proven themselves, but Purdy already has a 4-2 career record in the playoffs, better than a handful of QBs also making more than $50 million a year. Dallas’ Dak Prescott is 2-5 in the playoffs, Jacksonville’s Trevor Lawrence is 1-1, Green Bay’s Jordan Love is 1-2 and Miami’s Tua Tagovailoa is 0-1.

With a healthy supporting cast around Purdy, the question will be whether he can get back to his breakout 2023 form — 4,280 yards and 31 touchdowns against 11 interceptions — or whether he’ll be closer to his numbers from 2024, when he passed for 3,864 yards and 20 touchdowns against 12 picks.

Purdy is getting paid like a top-10 quarterback now, so he’ll have the unfamiliar weight of living up to his paycheck for the first time in his young NFL career.

Greg Auman is an NFL Reporter for FOX Sports. He previously spent a decade covering the Buccaneers for the Tampa Bay Times and The Athletic. You can follow him on Twitter at @gregauman.

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