Super Bowl quarterback Brock Purdy made $870,000 this season - 16 college football players made more via NIL

By Weston Blasi

Purdy was the last pick in the 2022 NFL draft, and led the 49ers to the Super Bowl this season

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 NFL.

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.

See also: Super Bowl bets could hit a record $23.1 billion this year. How the NFL is trying to keep players from betting a penny of that.

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.

NIL deals can come from the collectives that lure prospective student-athletes to a university, but they also can come from off-field endorsements.

See also: Will a Super Bowl only be available on a streaming service? 'That's where this is all headed.'

In addition to his salary, Purdy makes money from off-field endorsements with brands including Alaska Air (ALK), Toyota (TM) and Buffalo Wild Wings, but terms of those deals have not been made public.

He has an average annual contract value of $934,253, which is 89th among all NFL quarterbacks, according to Spotrac.

If the 49ers are able to win Super Bowl LVII, Purdy will get a $164,000 bonus, which is the amount that all players would receive for winning the title. Players on the losing team will "only" get $89,000.

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 at 6:30 p.m. Eastern time, and will be broadcast simultaneously on CBS and Paramount+ (PARA), as well as a n additional kid-centric broadcast on Nickelodeon.

See also: Peacock's NFL game led almost 3 million people to subscribe. Here's how long it needs them to stick around.

-Weston Blasi

This content was created by MarketWatch, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. MarketWatch is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

02-09-24 1105ET

Copyright (c) 2024 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.