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A year ago, the\u00a0Green Bay Packers\u00a0were negotiating a difficult contract with Jordan Love. After being a backup to Aaron Rodgers for three years, Love was sitting at the table with only 18 starts to show for, one of them on short notice three years earlier when Rodgers got covid.<\/p>\n
To make things more unusual, the Packers and Love had agreed to a one-year extension in the previous offseason, replacing the fifth-year option. At the end, the parties agreed to a four-year, $220 million deal to keep Love in Green Bay through 2028.<\/p>\n
Go back to 2025, and the\u00a0San Francisco 49ers\u00a0negotiated their own unusual contract extension with a quarterback. Last week,\u00a0Brock Purdy became the highest-paid seventh-round pick\u00a0in NFL history, getting a five-year, $265 million extension tying him to San Francisco through 2030.<\/p>\n
Being forced to make a decision based on fewer games, but with a high upside in what Love showed late in the 2023 season created good and bad aspects for the Packers in the negotiation, and Purdy’s new deal is a good point of reference to re-evaluate what Green Bay did.<\/p>\n
Last year, quarterback\u00a0agents moved in a direction to prioritize shorter deals. After Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen had signed long extensions, the idea was to sign four-year extensions to get back to the market earlier. That’s how Love, Tua Tagovailoa, and Dak Prescott all agreed to their extensions. And all of them are represented by Athletes First.<\/p>\n
Brock Purdy, represented by Kyle Strongin, accepted a longer deal, which is excellent for the franchise. The extra year of control is good by itself, but it’s also a way for the team to take advantage of the cap inflation.<\/p>\n
With quarterbacks getting more and more money and with huge cap increases every year, a team can fully maximize the negotiation by making the contract feel outdated in two or three years, with two or three years still left to play. That sets up leverage for the next negotiation, and that’s how the\u00a0Buffalo Bills\u00a0got a third contract with Josh Allen for $55 million a year after he won the MVP award, and after Jordan Love and Trevor Lawrence, worse quarterbacks, had signed for that same yearly average.<\/p>\n
For the teams, the longer the better.<\/p>\n
Because of how the Packers planned the transition from Aaron Rodgers to Jordan Love, the team ended up missing the rookie contract window for Love. That per se is a problem the Packers didn’t care much about because it was the plan all along. The real problem is that Love was a backup for three years, and the time to negotiate an extension came with a really small sample.<\/p>\n
Love had only a season as a full-time starter, only 18 games as a starter in his NFL career, and that season had two different halves. Had the Packers had an extra year to evaluate Love (let’s say the extension wouldn’t come before this offseason), they would pay less or be more secure to make the quarterback the highest-paid player in the NFL.<\/p>\n
Sure enough, Jordan Love has a higher ceiling than Brock Purdy. But the 49ers know better what they are getting from Purdy, because he has 36 regular season and six playoff games as a starter.<\/p>\n
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A\u00a0big negative for the 49ers\u00a0in their negotiations with Purdy was giving up a no-trade clause,\u00a0which Love’s deal with the Packers doesn’t have.<\/p>\n
Sure enough, if you reach a point where you are willing to move on from your quarterback after giving him a big extension, that’s bad no matter what. But the Packers have complete flexibility to trade Love at any point.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, if Purdy doesn’t live up to the expectations but still plays at a reasonable level over the next few years, the 49ers are basically forced to keep him or to cut him. If Purdy is to be traded, he will want to choose his next destination. And if a team knows it is the preferred destination, they will likely force the 49ers to cut Purdy anyway. That’s exactly why the\u00a0Las Vegas Raiders\u00a0released Derek Carr, and how he ended up with the\u00a0New Orleans Saints.<\/p>\n
The Packers and 49ers have different ways of structuring contracts as a premise. The exact numbers on Purdy are still not out, so we don’t know precisely his signing bonus and roster bonuses year after year like we do with Love.<\/p>\n
But generally speaking, the Packers tend to give a big signing bonus and no guarantees at all after that. Because Love is a quarterback and his market is different, the Packers still gave him a little bit more in guaranteed Money beyond the signing bonus, but it’s much less than the usual quarterback contract.<\/p>\n
Love got $100.8 million fully guaranteed at signing, and $75 million of it are in signing bonuses. The guarantees will still include the 2025 salary and a part of the 2026 salary. There are extra $60 million in\u00a0rolling guarantees in 2026\u00a0and injury guarantees in 2027.<\/p>\n
The 49ers gave Purdy more guarantees, reaching $180 million. Even though $100.5 million of it are fully-guaranteed at signing and the rest is not, the no-trade clause limits the benefits of it. San Francisco doesn’t give its players big signing bonuses, but rather offer small signing bonuses and big, year-over-year roster bonuses. That keeps the window open for a trade in which the acquiring team would absorb the guarantees. Again, however, the no-trade clause limits the benefits of it.<\/p>\n
If the Packers want to move on from Love at some point before the end of the contract, it will have a significant cap impact of the dead money, but\u00a0there will be no cash impact whatsoever, because the signing bonus will have already been paid.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, those were two fair deals with different structures based on different models the teams tend to use. And the performances of Jordan Love and Brock Purdy on the field will decide if the contracts were good or not. But at first, the Packers and 49ers did what they had to do to keep their young quarterbacks for years to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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