Five NFL games we can’t wait to watch in the 2025 season
The NFL schedule for the 2025-2026 season has been released. Here are a few games on our must-watch list.
Brock Purdy’s relevance hasn’t been in question for some time. But after finally and deservedly joining the ranks of the NFL’s top-compensated quarterbacks Friday afternoon, it’s time for the former “Mr. Irrelevant” to evolve into Mr. Eminent – who may or may not be a distant relative of Mr. Unlimited. (Sorry, onward.)
For the past three seasons, the San Francisco 49ers have had a roster full of Tiffany players surrounding a Costco quarterback, which is not shade intended at Purdy – if you’ve ever found a high-quality bargain at the wholesale warehouse, then you know. But even once the newly extension-eligible Purdy landed his long-awaited, five-year, $265 million ($181 million guaranteed) windfall, it was already fully apparent that the 2025 Niners were going to be far less accessorized.
The NFL is something of a zero-sum game by design – hence the parity that keeps things interesting on one level or another for all 32 fan bases. With a bag paying out an average of $53 million annually, Purdy, 25, now finds himself tied with the Detroit Lions’ Jared Goff, from that financial benchmark’s perspective, for the seventh place on the league’s salary scale. And that feels about right for a guy who’s reached two NFC championship games, one Super Bowl and earned a Pro Bowl nod while crafting a gaudy a 104.9 passer rating over the course of 40 NFL games. Sure, it’s ridiculous he’s averaging more money than Patrick Mahomes and Lamar Jackson – but it’s equally outrageous that Tua Tagovailoa and Trevor Lawrence remain ahead of Purdy on the QB check-cashing order.
To say Purdy needs to start earning his dough would be bogus considering the final pick of the 2022 NFL draft has banked about $2.6 million – total – during his first three seasons as a professional, a figure many of the NIL-enriched QB1s from the Power Four college football conferences would sneer at. Still, after years of thriving with passers who didn’t command top dollar – Jimmy Garoppolo also led San Francisco to the Super Bowl – Purdy does not need to prove GM John Lynch and coach Kyle Shanahan were right to fully invest in a player basically no one wanted coming out of Iowa State.
Purdy inherited a Lamborghini midway through the 2022 campaign, when the 49ers had initially given the keys to Trey Lance – he cost far more in terms of asset expenditure than the No. 3 pick of the 2021 draft – before he and, then, Garoppolo were injured. Purdy won all seven of his starts as a rookie before his throwing elbow was shredded during the NFC championship game in Philadelphia. But he recovered from his subsequent surgery well enough to get the team all the way to overtime of Super Bowl 59 a year later … before the Niners guessed wrong on the coin toss and ultimately bowed the knee to Mahomes’ Kansas City Chiefs.
But Lamborghinis are high-maintenance vehicles, and the battered Niners spent most of 2024 in the shop. They’ve since been stripped of Pro Bowl-caliber parts like Deebo Samuel, Charvarius Ward, Talanoa Hufanga, Dre Greenlaw, Javon Hargrave, Aaron Banks and Leonard Floyd – in part to reset an aging roster, but also to recalibrate their finances in order to sufficiently reward Purdy. Now the question is whether the Lambo has become a Jetta.
“We knew that we had to make sacrifices around the roster to make sure that you can pay a quarterback,” team owner Jed York told NFL Network last month.
All-universe back Christian McCaffrey barely played in 2024, dogged by injuries. Purdy’s favorite receiver, Brandon Aiyuk, barely played in 2024, dogged by injuries. Pass rusher Nick Bosa appeared mortal on a talent-drained defense. Left tackle Trent Williams, soon to be 37, remains prone to injuries and barely played half the season, leaving Purdy’s blind side too often exposed.
And one Brock Purdy – the man now scheduled to pull down a quarter of a bil – suffered through his worst season, throwing a pedestrian 20 touchdown passes while posting a career-worst 12 interceptions as his 96.1 passer rating dipped to 13th in the league. It all added up to a campaign when San Francisco plummeted from NFC champs to a 6-11 outfit.
Purdy pressed too often and was clearly and understandably hindered by his diminished supporting cast in 2024. But his new payday is now going to make that something of a fact of life. Purdy’s most strident critics – and there are plenty – will also rewind to the Super Bowl loss to the Chiefs and the missed throws and reads that arguably precluded the 49ers from capturing a record-tying sixth Lombardi Trophy. Unlike truly elite passers such as Mahomes, Josh Allen or Joe Burrow, maybe Purdy hasn’t yet definitively proven he’s a bona fide truck and not just a fancy trailer.
It’s worth noting his coach would vehemently disagree.
“Brock is the leader of our team,” Shanahan said at the end of the largely disastrous 2024 season. “I’ve loved these three years with Brock. I plan on being with Brock here the whole time I’m here.
“He’s a guy I’ve got a lot of confidence in just as a human, but it starts with what he’s done in the field these last two and a half years and capable of winning a Super Bowl with him. We just almost did. And I know he is capable of getting the Niners a Super Bowl in the future.”
Maybe Purdy just gets nitpicked by the rest of the world because he’ll always be a seventh-rounder. Maybe his unremarkable size and outwardly apparent physical skills limit his shine. Or perhaps it’s a perception that Shanahan is such a brilliant offensive mind, that you or I could take the snaps in Silicon Valley and get this team into the playoffs (speaking for myself, patently untrue). And, heck, he’s still just barely cracked the top quartile of the league-wide QB1 salary scale.
But it is time for Purdy to prove he can propel this franchise – one that hasn’t won a championship 30 years. He needs to be a leader on a squad breaking in quite a few unproven players. He’s now the youngest, richest quarterback in what could be the league’s toughest division top to bottom – and it’s just as easy to foresee the 49ers finishing in fourth place as first. However coming off a last-place finish did help arm them with the league’s easiest schedule in 2025 – based on their opponents’ 2024 winning percentage anyway.
They are certainly relieved to have their main arm locked up, too.
“I’ve been in situations where you have a great roster and the quarterback isn’t set, and it’s hard to have sustained success,” York said. “We want to make sure that Brock is a long-term partner. We want to make sure that he’s a part of our team for a long time.
“(I)t’s like, ‘Alright, he’s our guy.’ And if he’s our guy, you have to know that and make those decisions, and that’s where we are right now.”
Now it’s up to Purdy to prove that he’s more than another Jeff Garcia or Alex Smith or Colin Kaepernick and that his new contract isn’t pyrite – but a means to finally get the 49ers back into the Super Bowl goldmine they used to raid with such regularity.
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