Since returning to the ranks of the NFL’s elite in 2019, the 49ers have dealt with the financial growing pains of keeping a good team together. It has resulted in contracts that the team has grown to regret, such as last year’s late-August extension for receiver Brandon Aiyuk.
As they attempt to change the tires and gas the tank without the luxury of making a pit stop, the team’s attitude toward paying key players could be changing.
Via Michael Silver of TheAthletic.com, the 49ers have embarked on an “organizational reset” regarding the giving of extensions.
“Going ‘all in’ is out; coach-driven emotion is no longer a guiding principle,” Silver writes. “The 49ers are attempting to be cold, calculated and analytical when it comes to roster decisions.”
A recent observation from former NFL Network/CBS Sports insider Jason La Canfora that the 49ers have opened the Brock Purdy negotiations at $45 million per year doesn’t seem very cold, calculated, or analytical. It seems high, as openers go.
Purdy has a year left on his rookie deal, at $5.346 million. The 49ers could lowball him for 2025, forcing Purdy to carry the companion risks of injury and regression for another full season before embarking on the franchise-tag dance. And with the tag at $40.242 million for 2025, it likely won’t hit $45 million by 2026.
While Purdy has every right to seek every last penny, it’s important to match expectations with overall ability. He’s a middle-of-the-pack starter, even with the influence of Shanahan’s masterful coaching. In fairness, Purdy should make middle-of-the-pack money. Currently, $45 million per year in new-money average land just outside the top 10.
If that’s the opener, it’s more than fair. It would be, frankly, a moreh-than-fair bottom line.
Regardless, Silver’s article points to a power shift. Coach Kyle Shanahan, whose desire to keep his key players happy has resulted in multiple better-late-than-never deals, might not be able to prevail upon the bean counters to sweeten the pot as the clock is starting to strike twelve.
From Shanahan’s perspective, there’s a simple counter. If the folks guarding the mint hadn’t been so stubborn about getting deals done, contracts for players like Aiyuk and George Kittle and Deebo Samuel and Nick Bosa and Trent Williams would have been finalized sooner. As Silver notes, both Samuel and Bosa said their contract disputes resulted in subpar seasons.
Still, Shanahan’s most recent effort to close a deal — punctuated by Shanahan sprinting to G.M. John Lynch’s office to pull the plug on a trade that would have sent Aiyuk to the Steelers — apparently has become the catalyst for change. In hindsight, the 49ers should have traded Aiyuk then. The fact that they’d apparently like to trade him now, and that they surely won’t find anyone to take on his contract given his ongoing ACL rehab, underscores the blunder.
Should that one mistake justify ownership reclaiming control over contracts and freezing out Shanahan? No. But that’s what dysfunctional teams do. And the 49ers were riddled with dysfunction, flowing directly from the team’s non-dismissible CEO, before Shanahan and Lynch stabilized the franchise.
Jed York ran off perennial winner Jim Harbaugh, before a pair of one-and-done stints with Jim Tomsula and Chip Kelly. If Silver’s assessment of the “organizational reset” is correct, York is possibly commencing a launch sequence that ends with Shanahan and Lynch being gone, too.
We’ll see how it all plays out. But if the first step in the organizational reset is to put $45 million per year on the table for Purdy, the reset might not do much to get the 49ers their first Super Bowl win since the year before the Cowboys got their mitts on their most recent Lombardi Trophy.