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49ers Should Trade Brock Purdy if He Wants More than $50 Million Per

Stay strong, 49ers. And be bold.
Grant Cohn|
Jan 5, 2025; Glendale, Arizona, USA; San Francisco 49ers injured quarterback Brock Purdy prior to the game against the Arizona Cardinals at State Farm Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images
Jan 5, 2025; Glendale, Arizona, USA; San Francisco 49ers injured quarterback Brock Purdy prior to the game against the Arizona Cardinals at State Farm Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images | Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images

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San Francisco 49ers

The magic number for quarterbacks in the NFL these days is $50 million.

If you get paid more than $50 million per season, you're supposed to be a franchise QB. If you get paid less than $50 million per season, you're a bridge quarterback either because you're old or simply not that special.

Being a bridge quarterback pays extremely well -- $40 million per season is a ton of money. But the job comes with fewer guarantees and less security than franchise quarterbacks get. A bridge quarterback always has to look over his shoulder and beat out a young quarterback who's coming for his job. A franchise quarterback has nothing to worry about.

So you can see why Purdy and his agent might decide that anything less than $50 million per season is unacceptable. And if that's what they decide, should the 49ers pay him that much?

Absolutely not.

Purdy might think he's a franchise quarterback, but he hasn't proven that he's one yet. Last season, he lost five of his last six starts and got injured twice. If Purdy threatens to sit out until the 49ers pay him more than $50 million per season, they should trade him.

Let some other team screw up and pay Purdy too much money the way Dallas screwed up and overpaid Dak Prescott, or the way Miami screwed up and overpaid Tua Tagovailoa.

The 49ers don't need to follow their footsteps into football purgatory.

Stay strong, 49ers. And be bold.

Trade Purdy.

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Grant Cohn
GRANT COHN

Grant Cohn has covered the San Francisco 49ers daily since 2011. He spent the first nine years of his career with the Santa Rosa Press Democrat where he wrote the Inside the 49ers blog and covered famous coaches and athletes such as Jim Harbaugh, Colin Kaepernick and Patrick Willis. In 2012, Inside the 49ers won Sports Blog of the Year from the Peninsula Press Club. In 2020, Cohn joined FanNation and began writing All49ers. In addition, he created a YouTube channel which has become the go-to place on YouTube to consume 49ers content. Cohn's channel typically generates roughly 3.5 million viewers per month, while the 49ers' official YouTube channel generates roughly 1.5 million viewers per month. Cohn live streams almost every day and posts videos hourly during the football season. Cohn is committed to asking the questions that 49ers fans want answered, and providing the most honest and interactive coverage in the country. His loyalty is to the reader and the viewer, not the team or any player or coach. Cohn is a new-age multimedia journalist with an old-school mentality, because his father is Lowell Cohn, the legendary sports columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle from 1979 to 1993. The two have a live podcast every Tuesday. Grant Cohn grew up in Oakland and studied English Literature at UCLA from 2006 to 2010. He currently lives in Oakland with his wife.

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