Will the 49ers Trade Brock Purdy if They Don't Win the Super Bowl?
The 49ers haven't committed themselves long-term to Brock Purdy just yet.
He still has one more season before he's eligible for a contract extension. And if he wins the Super Bowl, of course the 49ers will give him an extremely lucrative one. But what if he fails to win the Super Bowl for the third season in a row? What would the 49ers do then?
Head coach Kyle Shanahan clearly respects Brock Purdy and thinks he's a good quarterback. But does Shanahan think Purdy is good enough to win a Super Bowl? Does Shanahan think he's elite? If not, would Shanahan trade Purdy for an elite quarterback next year?
I'm guessing Shanahan privately holds Purdy at least partially responsible for the 49ers' most recent Super Bowl loss. Because Shanahan certainly would never blame himself. And while Purdy was good in that game against the Chiefs, he wasn't great.
And if the 49ers can't win a Super Bowl while Purdy is making roughly $1 million per season, how will they win one if he's making roughly $60 million per season? They ultimately could decide that he was the best quarterback for them while he's on a rookie deal, but at a higher price point they'd be better off with someone else.
They could trade Purdy to the Cowboys for Dak Prescott. Or they could trade Purdy to the Falcons for Kirk Cousins. We know Cousins and Shanahan are extremely close friends and probably would like to work with each other one more time before they retire.
Stranger things have happened.
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.