This is the third installment of our eight-part series “State of the 49ers.” We’ll assess each position group and introduce solutions that could help the team on its Super Bowl hunt — continuing with quarterbacks.
With both Brock Purdy and Mac Jones under contract for 2026, the 49ers have the best quarterback room in the NFL — and it fits particularly well with the play-calling prowess of head coach Kyle Shanahan.
The proof is in the pudding:
EPA/play is “expected points added” per play, ANY/A is “adjusted net yards per attempt”, and CPOE is “completion percentage over expectation” from NFL Next Gen Stats.
The pressing question now: Will that last through this offseason, or will the 49ers trade Jones out of their prestigious QB rehab program that also deserves at least some credit for Sam Darnold’s recent Super Bowl title with the Seahawks?
More on that in a bit. First, let’s take some time to appreciate just how good the 49ers had it in 2025. The mass injury event that stacked the deck against them actually set up the perfect stage to demonstrate the prowess of a quarterback room.
Because of Purdy’s turf toe injury, both quarterbacks saw a nearly identical workload (Purdy had 340 drop backs and Jones had 336). Both scored in the top 10 of QBR, perhaps the best way to quantify performance at the position. Purdy finished No. 2 while Jones was No. 9, ahead of even Baltimore’s Lamar Jackson.
And, perhaps most importantly when it comes to the wild world of NFL QB discourse, neither 49er could be rationally denigrated along the lines of “his weapons did all the work” — because both Purdy and Jones essentially ran out of weapons and succeeded anyway. Jones’ pinnacle came when he led a skeleton crew to a Week 5 win over the Rams; Purdy’s came in the playoffs when he guided San Francisco to a shorthanded upset over the Eagles.
Most NFL teams cannot find one quarterback who elevates a system. The 49ers had two. This was the biggest reason behind their miraculous push to 13 wins in adverse circumstances, and it’s statistically illustrated below.
While Jones did a marvelous job stabilizing the 49ers’ offense in an eight-game stretch of distress (the team went 5-3), Purdy clearly took it new levels — spearheading top-3 efficiency even though the 49ers no longer have an elite run game (they were No. 10 in EPA per rush) or receiver spacing (they ranked No. 24 in average separation at the time of catch or incompletion).
In fact, Purdy — who’s ranked No. 1 of all NFL quarterbacks across several efficiency metrics since joining the league in 2022 — actually widened his lead over the rest of the field. And he did so while playing through a turf toe injury and with that severely understaffed supporting cast.
Success rate is a measure of consistency; it represents the percentage of plays that generate a positive EPA.
The one, and perhaps only, readily apparent statistical weakness of Purdy’s game lies in his 3.5-percent interception rate, a career-high which ranked sixth worst in the league. The fact that three of Purdy’s 10 picks came clustered in one half of nationally-televised football against the Panthers certainly didn’t help the casual fan’s perception of his play.
But all interceptions come within context, and that’s why more sophisticated stats like QBR, EPA, and ANY/A exist. All of those metrics punish quarterbacks for throwing picks — and Purdy still emerged with elite scores in those categories. This suggests that his play generated much more reward than the downside of its risk.
In fact, Purdy’s overall 2025 efficiency trailed only the clip he delivered in 2023, the season that the 49ers surrounded him with a healthy superteam of skill position weapons.
Much of Purdy’s effectiveness is hidden in some areas of QB performance that may not be as readily visible to the casual observer.
While it’s easy to fawn over Herculean QB physiques and cannon-like arm strength, great quarterbacks typically differentiate themselves much more subtly in arenas like pressure reversal or down-and-distance management. The QB that can most often turn a high-probability sack into a short gain that preserves manageable situations provides more value than a passer who throws the occasional jaw-dropping laser downfield — but then misfires on a routine throw that would’ve kept an offense on schedule.
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Purdy is clearly one of the effective QBs who succeeds at the very margins that can go under-appreciated.
His pressure-to-sack ratio (just 8.6% percent), for one, is the best in football. His performance on third down — known as “the quarterback’s down” because improvisation beyond what a play caller can script is more often necessary to move the chains — was a huge distance above the rest of the league in 2025 (look to the very top and the very right below).
Purdy’s insane splits on third down: 0.611 EPA/play (30.8% above second-ranked Jordan Love) and +14.% CPOE (62.5% above second-ranked Drake Maye).
Unsurprisingly, third down is the biggest gap between Purdy and Jones, who ranked No. 13 in third-down efficiency.
Jones No. 13 ranking in EPA/play on third down is still really good — especially for a backup QB working with such a limited supporting cast. There’s a reason why Jones should command real trade interest in the coming days and weeks: He played at a high level in 2025.
Perhaps a team like the Vikings, who grabbed Darnold after his 2023 work with Purdy and the 49ers, might be interested in the stabilizing presence that Jones can bring the most important position. Minnesota might feel the need to further bridge the gap of youngster J.J. McCarthy’s development.
But how much would a suitor like that be willing to offer the 49ers? Back in 2013, they traded Alex Smith – who’d been relegated to a backup role — to the Kansas City Chiefs for a second-round pick. Would similar compensation be enough for Jones, or do the 49ers have good enough reason to stand unmoved absent an offer that’s even shockingly better than that?
No Jones would mean that the 49ers might hand backup duties to Kurtis Rourke, who spent his rookie season finishing a recovery from a college ACL tear. The team could also sign its next QB rehab project, but it’s clear that Shanahan and 49ers general manager John Lynch aren’t taking Jones’ top-10 efficiency for granted.
“He’s really good for us and we value that,” Lynch said on Tuesday at the NFL Scouting Combine. “And so somebody would have to come with something fairly strong for us to consider [trading him]. And then I don’t know what we do. Obviously, there’s always something that would make you do it, but I think we’re a better team with him on it and we just like having him around.”
Translation: The 49ers very much enjoyed having the NFL’s best quarterback room in 2025, and it’ll take some real convincing from them to move off that luxury in 2026 — because it was a necessity for the success of their season.
