Brock Purdy Has Always Been This Guy

Brock Purdy Has Always Been This Guy

GuyWhoLikesSport

My second favourite rom com ever, after The Break-Up, is Crazy Stupid Love.

It’s Ryan Gosling being a movie star, Emma Stone being Emma Stone and Steve Carell wearing better clothes and all of a sudden becoming an object of intense desire after having spent the first part of the movie down in the dumps wearing yellow polos.

The Steve Carell makeover, where not that much changes but the outside perception of him, is how I feel about the season Brock Purdy is having.

While the 49ers are 2-3 and Purdy was not great against Arizona, the discussion around him has morphed from “Purdy is a game manager who is running Kyle Shanahan’s offence” to “look at Purdy chucking it down the field. What a gunslinger.”

Prior to this season, the book on Purdy was always that he was like Mac Jones in a better situation. He could keep the train on the tracks but as soon as anything went wrong, he was cooked. He was entirely reliant on his superstar teammates keeping him afloat with run after catch and was, in general, a cog in the machine rather than the machine.

In reality, Purdy has always played like a skinnier Josh Allen.

He has always made plays out of structure and liked his chances fitting the ball into contested situations, even despite not having a rocket ship attached to his right shoulder.

Now, with fewer weapons, Purdy’s always high risk-tolerance is bringing him a tribe of new fans.

The shift in discussion has come amid a general offensive downturn, and a general desire among NFL quarterbacks to check the ball down. Even despite an excellent offensive week in Week 4, not a single team in the NFL is over eight net yards per pass attempt in the NFL and we are 10 yards per team per game below last year’s full season passing yards per team per game numbers.

In that environment Purdy has the second highest average depth of target in the NFL this season behind only Anthony Richardson, who isn’t really playing quarterback as much as he is throwing it a very long way on every play and seeing what happens.

He is also third in yards past the sticks, again behind Anthony Richardson and Trevor Lawrence.

Put simply, Purdy is chucking it and to great success. He’s fourth in EPA per drop back, sixth in success rate, and seventh in completion percentage over expectation among players who have started every game.

While he’s still making the easy plays and keeping his offence on the tracks, he’s making unlikely plays out of structure as well. He’s doing it all.

What makes Purdy’s season more impressive is that he’s done it without the full death star at his disposal. Christian McCaffrey hasn’t played this season, Deebo Samuel and George Kittle have both missed time, and Brandon Aiyuk only just showed up to the 2024 season in week four.

If anything, he’s actually done the anti-Cal Weaver in season 2024. He’s taken off the cool new quarter zips and has the yellow polo on but is still spitting game.

Even despite his team, that came into the season with serious Super Bowl aspirations after having lost last season, sitting 2-3 Purdy has received plaudits this year for the way that he has kept the passing offence afloat and, more than anything, his willingness to chuck it.

But, again, he was this guy last year.

Among players who played at least 500 snaps in 2023, Purdy was seventh in air yards and first in completion percentage over expectation. He was also first in EPA/play and success rate while running the best passing offence in the league.

Last year he didn’t quite throw it as far down the field, averaging a little over 8 yards in average depth of target, which was still seventh in the league, compared to 10 this year. But that is because he was getting so much more run after catch last season.

Even that minor shift, throwing it farther down the field as his receivers after the catch ability has lessened particularly with McCaffrey out and Samuel not playing as well, Purdy has tweaked the way he’s playing to fit the situation.

 

He might not be the most talented player in the NFL. He doesn’t have the biggest arm, the most size, the most strength among all the quarterbacks playing, but he does have one of the biggest risk appetites and the ability to keep his team afloat.

That was true last year when he had all of the Beatles, and it’s true this year where he’s more of a solo act.

As McCaffrey returns and Deebo gets healthier, the underlying numbers for the 49ers are still elite and they’ll return to the top echelon of the NFL in short order behind Brock Purdy.

 

 

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