This post is not a referendum on whether 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy is good. There’s nothing more tiresome than an “Is X QB actually good?” argument, especially one that centers around a tiny-ass white dude who was only drafted by the skin of his teeth. Brock Purdy is a good quarterback, even if a few dedicated haters wish he weren’t. I can make the numbers case easily, given that Purdy currently ranks ninth in PFF’s QB metrics (above the likes of Jared Goff and Jordan Love) and given that he set team records by posting over 4,000 yards and 30 passing touchdowns just a season ago. As for the eye test, you saw the guy nearly win the Super Bowl last February, which is something that doesn’t happen for the Nathan Petermans of this world.

So this isn’t about whether Brock Purdy is good. It’s about whether he’s good enough.

When the 49ers’ season ends Sunday, after a meaningless tangle with the NFC West perennial also-ran Cardinals, the team will be free to negotiate a contract extension that keeps Purdy as its franchise QB through the rest of this decade. Because Purdy was the last player drafted in 2022, he’s working under a contract that’s paying him a base salary of $985,000 this season. That contract makes him a ludicrous anomaly among his quarterbacking peers. It’s a pittance, loose change, an insult. Purdy deserves a contract that befits his standing as a top-tier NFL starter, and not one fit for a glorified walk-on.

According to Nick Wagoner at ESPN, the Niners’ braintrust is ready to offer him just that, likely a deal that pays him somewhere between $50 million and $60 million in average annual value. That kind of deal would compensate Purdy fairly while also keeping the team’s QB situation stable and ensuring that Kyle Shanahan won’t draft Quatre Lance with an otherwise vital Day 1 draft pick somewhere down the line. Everyone wins in this arrangement.

Except, possibly, the 49ers. The NFL’s rookie wage scale has made it so that you cannot evaluate any quarterback without factoring in the amount of cap space they eat up. Purdy’s current cap share is so tiny, you’d need an electron microscope to see it. That’s how the 49ers have been able to stack the roster around him over the past three years, to the point where you can make a good (if well-worn) argument that Purdy’s success is more the result of having the best skill position group in football (Christian McCaffrey, Deebo Samuel, George Kittle, Kyle Juszczyk, and Brandon Aiyuk) at his disposal than it is the result of his own talents. But once Purdy gets his new deal, the bargain vanishes. And given that this was an unprecedented bargain in nature, who’s to say it wasn’t the best thing Purdy had going for him?

If you’re a “the salary cap is fake!” kind of person, you can come back at me by saying that 49ers general manager and spiritual Gruden John Lynch can backload the money in Purdy’s new deal to keep the team relatively flexible, at least for now, with regard to the salary cap. The problem is that the rest of this roster is no longer as impregnable as it once was. McCaffrey has been able to play only four games this season. Deebo is having one of the worst seasons of his career. Left tackle Trent Williams hasn’t played since Week 11. And as for Aiyuk, the star wideout got a new deal right before this season, posted a single 100-yard game across two months of action, and then tore his ACL against Kansas City in October, putting him out for the year. This isn’t Ohio State. If you lose a star player, a new one just doesn’t automatically grow in its place. You have to churn your NFL roster shrewdly; otherwise, it will atrophy.

That atrophy has grown evident throughout the bulk of 2024. And what do s—tty teams do when they’re confronted with the mortality of their core? They just keep bringing the band back year after year, at increasingly higher prices. That includes the quarterback, and just look at the franchise QBs from this season alone who failed to live up to their new deals: Dak Prescott, Trevor Lawrence, Tua Tagovailoa. It was a bloodbath out there, all because teams didn’t cut bait before they should have. And I didn’t even mention Kirk Cousins here, lest I manifest Shanahan making a play for his old, gimpy ass.

It sounds odd to recommend cutting bait on a dude who just turned 25. But the 49ers have over $60M in cap space heading into the offseason. They’ve also got a number of key players — cornerback Charvarius Ward, defensive tackle Javon Hargrave, linebacker Dre Greenlaw, running back Jordan Mason, and safety Talanoa Hufanga chief among them — headed into unrestricted free agency. This roster will churn whether Lynch and Shanahan like it or not, and giving Purdy the keys to Fort Knox means trusting him in full to carry this team when perhaps no other player on it can. If you’re a Niners fan, you fear this prospect just a tad, even if you won’t say so out loud. Purdy, out this week, will have now missed the end of two seasons thanks to a bum elbow. He can’t play in s—tty weather (good thing the Niners don’t play home games in actual San Francisco), he struggles without Aiyuk in the lineup, and he’s not a first-round talent.

That last part matters. If you look at the current DVOA ratings, the Niners are the only top-10 team without a starting QB who was drafted in the first or second round. In fact, the only second-rounder on that list is Eagles QB Jalen Hurts, who’s passed for over 300 yards exactly once this season. Every other team contending for a Super Bowl has a QB with a first-rounder’s size, agility and arm talent. These are players who can act as one-man offenses when times get lean. There’s no guarantee that Purdy will be able to work similar magic if he has only slobs to throw the ball to. You can’t know for sure until you extend him. And are you willing to take that chance, especially when you know that the 14-2 Vikings are on a heater thanks to signing a QB in Sam Darnold who was in the 49ers’ building just a season ago? Because you’re up s—t creek if you’re wrong about Purdy.

And you could be. We all could be. That’s what makes the idea of bringing him back so daunting. That’s why extending Purdy now would be a mistake. He’s still under contract for next year, although he’ll almost certainly hold out from training camp this summer. The Niners should let him and then see what happens. There’s risk in that, but there’s an even greater risk in giving Purdy everything he wants. We know he’s good. The decaying Niners are going to need more than that.