Brock Purdy Could Become Cheapest Super Bowl-Winning QB: Data Viz
Both quarterbacks in this year’s Super Bowl have been exhaustively compared to Tom Brady. The Kansas City Chiefs’ Patrick Mahomes, like Brady, has dominated the AFC early in his career, reaching four Super Bowls before his 29th birthday. The San Francisco 49ers’ Brock Purdy, like Brady, was a late-round draft pick thrown into a starting role after a teammate’s injury and made the Super Bowl in his age 24 season.
Mahomes and Purdy are also linked to Brady when it comes to their contracts. Last year, Mahomes led the Chiefs to a Super Bowl win while taking up 17.2% of the team’s salary cap with a $35.8 million figure. That was the largest percentage for a quarterback on a Super Bowl winning team this century, passing none other than Brady, who received 12.6% of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ cap when he won his last ring in 2021. This year, Mahomes’ salary occupies 16.9% of Kansas City’s cap—the largest share of any quarterback in the league.
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The lowest outlier among Super Bowl-winning quarterbacks in the 2000s also belongs to Brady, who won his first championship in 2002 with a $310,000 cap hit—only 0.46% of the New England Patriots’ total. If the 49ers win on Sunday, Purdy would break this record, as his cap hit represents just 0.37% of his club’s total.
The Chiefs’ and 49ers’ quarterback pay has led to different approaches to roster building, as the 49ers have used the extra money on offensive skill positions and defense. San Francisco spends 50% of its cap on defense, compared to just 41% for the Chiefs.
This story very closely resembles the one from last year, when the Philadelphia Eagles spent just 3.4% of their total active roster payroll on the signal-caller position while the Chiefs spent roughly a fifth of theirs on Mahomes alone. This year's 49ers spend 5% on their QBs because Sam Darnold is among the league's most expensive backups.
The last six Super Bowls have featured a quarterback on a cheap rookie deal, with Purdy following in the footsteps of Eagles' Jalen Hurts (2023), Bengals' Joe Burrow (2022), Mahomes (2020 and 2021) and Jared Goff, then with the Rams (2019). Going back further, there are more examples: The 2018 Eagles qualify when considering sophomore Carson Wentz started their first 13 games; the Seattle Seahawks made back-to-back Super Bowls in 2014 and 2015 with Russell Wilson on a cheap rookie contract; and the 49ers made one with a second-year Colin Kaepernick in 2013.
Clearly, skimping on the most important position in football in order to round out the rest of the roster is a viable winning strategy in the modern NFL due to limits on what highly capable quarterbacks can earn during their first four seasons. Last year, eight of the 14 playoff quarterbacks were on rookie deals. This year, that number was only five, but the Bucs’ Baker Mayfield and the Pittsburgh Steelers’ Mason Rudolph were on stingy $4 million and $1.1 million contracts, respectively.
So if the Chiefs break the bank to keep the best quarterback in the league, where do the 49ers have the edge? One such department is backs and receivers. Both teams invest heavily in the tight end position—KC’s Travis Kelce and San Francisco’s George Kittle are game changers who have been with their respective franchises since their previous Super Bowl meeting in 2020. Only two NFL teams, however, spend a smaller percentage of their payroll on running backs in 2023 than the Chiefs, who drafted starter Isiah Pacheco in the seventh round. The 49ers ranked seventh in proportional spending on backs and also outspent Kansas City on wide receivers.
On the other side of the ball, the 49ers have the big edge financially when it comes to linebackers, a position on which they spent 14.3% of their cap as opposed to the Chiefs’ 4.6%. Kansas City’s best players at the position are young and cheap, whereas the 49ers’ three-time All-Pro Fred Warner recently extended for $95 million over five years.
Both teams go all-in on the defensive line. The 49ers allocate 25.8% of their cap to edge rushers and tackles and the Chiefs spend 22.9%, both of which are well ahead of the league average of 17.7%.
A few days before the regular season, the 49ers gave Nick Bosa a five-year, $170 million extension that made him the NFL’s highest-paid non-quarterback ever. Their second biggest cap hit in 2023 belongs to another defensive end, Arik Armstead. Meanwhile, defensive tackle Chris Jones is the Chiefs’ second highest-paid player and is responsible for the sixth biggest cap hit in the entire league.
Interestingly, the Chiefs spend significantly more on special teams. Their kicker, Harrison Butker, who has been in Kansas City during the entire Mahomes era and has converted 28 of his 32 postseason field goal attempts, makes more than $4 million per year. 49ers kicker Jake Moody is a rookie whose cap hit is just $964,000.
The Chiefs and 49ers show that franchises can assemble Super Bowl rosters in very different ways, starting with how much or how little they pay their quarterbacks. Having an elite QB regardless of salary, though, is still the easiest way to punch a ticket to the Super Bowl, as either Mahomes or Brady has lifted five of the last seven Lombardi trophies.
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