Before the 49ers signed Mac Jones, their grade for free agency was a D at best.
Sure, they got rid of some bad contracts, but they lost eight starters and replaced them with inexpensive backups and special teams players. So they got cheaper, but they didn’t actually get better anywhere.
Until they signed Jones.
Jones is a major upgrade over the backup quarterbacks the 49ers had last season — Joshua Dobbs and Brandon Allen. Jones was a first-round pick in 2021 and he took the awful Patriots to the playoffs as a rookie.
Jones certainly isn’t a great quarterback, but he can be a good one on a good team, similar to Brock Purdy. But Purdy wants more than $50 million per season while Jones just signed for two years and $7 million. He’s a bargain, and he’s not a one-year rental like Sam Darnold was.
Like Darnold, Jones played for bad teams early in his career. We know what he looks like on bad teams. Now we get to see him on the 49ers when he gets to hand off to throw to George Kittle and Christian McCaffrey.
We’ve seen Purdy on the 49ers, and he has played quite well at times. But we’ve never seen him play for a bad franchise. He might have struggled just as much or more than Jones did.
In fact, how do we really know that Purdy is better than Jones? He’s more mobile than Jones, but he doesn’t have a better arm than him. All we know for sure is that Purdy has played on better teams than Jones.
If Purdy holds out and decides not to show up to OTAs without a contract extension, the 49ers would have an opportunity to see what Jones looks like running the first-string offense.
Wouldn’t that be interesting?
