Brock Purdy signed a four-year contract with the San Francisco 49ers in 2022 that turned out to be one of the biggest bargains in the league today.
Because Purdy, 24, was drafted with the final pick in the seventh round of the NFL draft in 2022, he’s locked into a lower yearly salary for his first four years in the league. Typically seventh-round picks struggle to remain in the NFL, and rarely become MVP candidates as Purdy has done. In the preseason, Purdy outperformed Trey Lance, who was drafted No. 3 in the 2022 draft, and Purdy has been the starter all year.
That makes Purdy a starting quarterback in the upcoming Super Bowl. He was third among all quarterbacks in the NFL this season in touchdowns thrown, with 31, and fifth in passing yardage, at 4,280.
But he will make just $870,000 in salary this season. His opponent in the Super Bowl, Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, will make $44.5 million this season.
Even more surprising? Purdy’s contract pays him less than what 16 college football players made this season, according to On3’s proprietary NIL algorithm, which is based on NIL-deal data, performance, influence and exposure.
The top five of that list includes the University of Colorado’s Shedeur Sanders ($4.7 million), Texas’s Arch Manning ($2.8 million), Colorado’s Travis Hunter ($2.3 million), Texas’s Quinn Ewers ($1.7 million) and Alabama’s Jalen Milroe ($1.5 million).
The NCAA began allowing college athletes to earn name, image and likeness money in 2021, when student-athletes won a decades-long argument over the fairness of receiving no remuneration even as the games they played in generated millions of dollars for the institutions in which they were enrolled.
See also: These college athletes are making over $1 million a year from NIL
NIL deals can come from the collectives that lure prospective student-athletes to a university, but they also can come from off-field endorsements.
In addition to his salary, Purdy makes money from off-field endorsements with brands including Alaska Air
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He has an average annual contract value of $934,253, which is 89th among all NFL quarterbacks, according to Spotrac.
In October 2023, Purdy told the “Today” show that he still had a roommate, “one of the offensive lineman,” and “I still drive my Toyota Sequoia,” while living in one of the most highly taxed states in the country in California.
The 49ers play the Kansas City Chiefs in the Super Bowl on Feb. 11.
