Insider offers wild option at QB for 49ers if they don’t extend Brock Purdy

It would appear the San Francisco 49ers’ future at quarterback is set with Brock Purdy.

The Athletic’s 49ers beat reporter Matt Barrows isn’t so sure.

Barrows in an appearance on 95.7 the Game in San Francisco told hosts Steiny and Guru that quarterback Aaron Rodgers could be a route the 49ers go instead of extending Purdy in the offseason since their other options are relatively thin.

“I don’t really know what the recourse would be,” Barrows said. “Do you play hardball with Brock Purdy? Who else is going to be your quarterback? Do you want Brandon Allen to be your quarterback? Do you go out and sign Sam Darnold who will be a free agent?

The one sort of intriguing possibility is in New York if things just fall apart with the Jets and all the sudden Aaron Rodgers — a guy that the 49ers were definitely interested in in the past — becomes available.”

It’s hard to imagine San Francisco would still be as interested in Rodgers as they were three or four years ago when his exit from Green Bay looked imminent. His tenure in New York has featured a catastrophic Achilles injury and a worse start than they had under Zach Wilson. Not to mention Rodgers isn’t playing particularly well and he turns 41 on Dec. 2.

Even if they’re still not sold on Purdy, they could conceivably have him play out the final year of his rookie contract before committing to a deal at or near the top of the market. The final pick in the 2022 draft is under contract through the 2025 season.

Rodgers is also under contract through 2025, but New York may be eager to move on from him given how calamitous his tenure there has been.

It sounds, per Barrows, like having Purdy play out his rookie deal would be a route the team went before making a seismic shift to an aging Hall of Famer like Rodgers.

”I just think that — two things — one is that the 49ers are not as down on Brock Purdy as the public is,” Barrows said. “I think they realize Purdy is dealing with a lot of challenges this year. And we can go over them, it’s a laundry list of things that are different from last year and that they’re very happy to have him for the future.

And B, and probably most important … the market is the market. They’re not going to — just like Brandon Aiyuk and wide receivers — they’re not gonna be able to get a discount if Brock Purdy’s numbers dip a little bit this year. That doesn’t come with a discount. They’re gonna have to pay what the going rate for a starting quarterback is, and it’s been well established — some guys we don’t think of as top-tier quarterbacks have gotten paid like top-tier quarterbacks recently.”

If Rodgers does come available, we can probably expect his name to be tied to the 49ers. He and the club are inextricably linked since they passed on him in the 2005 draft, but it sounds more like San Francisco would sooner roll with Purdy than take on Rodgers at this point.