Having QBs under rookie contracts opens up options for 49ers’ roster

SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Given the San Francisco 49ers‘ ongoing uncertainty at quarterback, this offseason has been just like almost every other since coach Kyle Shanahan and general manager John Lynch took over in 2017. Which is to say that the Niners have again been connected to every name-brand quarterback that’s available or perceived to be.

As Shanahan sat at a table answering endless quarterback questions at the league meetings in late March, he was asked about the possibility of San Francisco pursuing Baltimore’s Lamar Jackson.

Shanahan’s answer hit most of the typical, respectful notes, but it was how it ended that offered the clearest insight into his team’s approach at the game’s most important position.

“Everyone knows Lamar’s skill,” Shanahan said. “Lamar is a stud. I’m sure they’ll work it out there … We’ve got three quarterbacks we’re pretty good with right now and I’m pretty excited with how we built our roster salary cap wise.”

Focus only on the final dozen words of Shanahan’s response. For the first time since Shanahan and Lynch’s first season in San Francisco, the Niners are not paying premium prices for their quarterbacks. Their three signal-callers — Brock Purdy, Trey Lance and Sam Darnold — are slated to count a combined $15,302,452 against the 2023 salary cap, which ranks 15th in the NFL.

Lance and Purdy are playing on rookie contracts that come at bargain prices relative to the rest of the position. To hear Shanahan, Lynch and 49ers chief executive officer Jed York tell it, that’s not by mistake. It is very much by design.

Over the past five seasons, San Francisco has ranked first, 10th, seventh, eighth and eighth, respectively, in cap dollars committed to quarterbacks. That significant financial outlay has landed the Niners on the doorstep of Super Bowls but hasn’t gotten them over the hump.

That can partially be attributed to the continued injury woes they’ve had at the position, most notably with Jimmy Garoppolo, but the Niners also reached the conclusion that unless you have a force multiplier like Patrick Mahomes or Tom Brady, they’re better off finding younger, cheaper quarterback talent and diverting their resources elsewhere.

By leaning into the value of the rookie quarterback contract, the Niners have been able to re-sign stars such as tight end George Kittle, left tackle Trent Williams, receiver Deebo Samuel and linebacker Fred Warner to top-market deals. It’s also why the Niners dove head first into free agency to land defensive tackle Javon Hargrave in the opening minutes of the negotiating window with a four-year, $84 million deal. In 2023, the Niners will rank sixth in cap money devoted to running backs, second on tight ends and the defensive line (before end Nick Bosa‘s extension) and fifth at linebacker.

Most of that wouldn’t be possible if the Niners hadn’t pivoted away from the top end of the quarterback market and turned to cost-controlled rookies.

“It’s everything,” Shanahan said. “A couple years ago we realized some of the players that we had drafted, we knew all these guys were coming up and you can’t keep all those guys if you don’t have a quarterback on a rookie deal. So we saw kind of where this was going … That was the whole goal. If we could get a quarterback on a rookie deal to play at a high-enough level that we thought we could win with, then we thought we could build our team.”

The original plan was for Lance to be the quarterback to take over for Garoppolo and significantly alter the Niners’ cap commitment at the position. In the first four seasons after Garoppolo signed his five-year, $137.5 million deal in 2018, his average cap charge was $27,612,500. In that span, Garoppolo played only one full season (2019) and missed a combined 25 games, which is why the Niners traded up for Lance in the 2021 NFL draft and planned to install him as the starter in 2022.

Lance’s average cap charge for the four years of his rookie contract registered at $9.03 million, or just under 33% of Garoppolo’s average cap charges. That opened the door for the Niners to dole out big contracts to Samuel, Warner and Williams, trade for pricey running back Christian McCaffrey and land cornerback Charvarius Ward and Hargrave. It’s also left them with enough wiggle room to ink Bosa to a mega-extension, something they expect to get done later this offseason.

“We’ve got a lot of really good football players that are under contract and the few years, that’s when we’ve got the core of our team together,” Lynch said. “To us it made sense to not be irresponsible, but let’s press forward. Let’s have a plan.”

Of course, the plan took a detour last season when Lance suffered a broken right ankle in Week 2. Garoppolo took over, then was lost to a broken left foot in Week 13. Although he was the last pick in the 2022 NFL draft, Purdy stepped into the starting role and didn’t miss a beat, winning his first seven starts and playing well enough for Shanahan and Lynch to deem Purdy the “leader in the clubhouse” to be the 2023 starter despite a torn UCL in his right elbow suffered early in the NFC Championship Game.

If Purdy is able to recover and return to previous form, the Niners might have one of the NFL’s most valuable assets. Because he was the last pick in the draft, Purdy’s cap charge for 2023 is only $889,253. For context, consider that only the 51 most expensive contracts on a 90-man roster count against the offseason salary cap. Purdy’s number is so low that he won’t even count on San Francisco’s cap until the regular season starts in September.

Of course, the Niners don’t intend to have their starting quarterback on a rookie contract forever. The hope remains that Purdy or Lance earn a lucrative contract extension that would kick in after some of their current core has moved on. For the record, Lance would be extension eligible for the first time after this season but Purdy won’t be until after the 2024 season.

Only six quarterbacks on rookie contracts — Brady, Ben Roethlisberger, Eli Manning, Joe Flacco, Russell Wilson and Mahomes — have started and won a Super Bowl since the salary cap era began in 1994. Of those, only Wilson and Mahomes have won them under the current collective bargaining agreement which has a slotted system for rookie wages. If one of the Niners can add his name to that list, there figures to be a big payday waiting that would again change the Niners’ cap calculus.

“There’s a delta in what you are spending on your quarterback versus what somebody else is spending on their quarterback,” York said. “And I hope that one of these three guys gets a massive, massive extension with the San Francisco 49ers at some point. But until that, we’re gonna make sure that we build this thing around a young quarterback with a very team friendly contract. And again, the ultimate goal is to win a championship.”