Brock Purdy deserving of more credit for 2022 success
Brock Purdy stunned the NFL last year with his string of excellent performances for the 49ers down the stretch after the final pick in last year's draft was elevated to the role of starting quarterback. But his remarkable ascension was not enough to prevent him being put in Tier 4 of Mike Sando's annual quarterback […]
Brock Purdy stunned the NFL last year with his string of excellent performances for the 49ers down the stretch after the final pick in last year's draft was elevated to the role of starting quarterback.
But his remarkable ascension was not enough to prevent him being put in Tier 4 of Mike Sando's annual quarterback tiers ranking for The Athletic.
Purdy was 24th overall, top of a tier designated as being for unproven players and for veterans a team could not trust for 17 games.
That is perhaps not surprising. Even though Purdy was extremely impressive across his seven unbeaten starts in the regular season and the playoffs, it is still a very small sample size, and it's difficult to make a definitive judgment about a player with that little experience coming off elbow surgery.
More eyebrow-raising was seeing Purdy behind Justin Fields (ranked 21st), though Fields' two seasons of starting experience and dynamism running the ball explains that positioning somewhat despite his problems as a thrower.
Yet the most questionable aspect of Purdy's position on the list is not the ranking, but the comments made by one coach in explaining it.
An offensive coach was quoted by Sando as saying:
"You put him on any other team and they lose more than half the games. They got the best rushing offense, they got the top defense, he doesn’t make mistakes and he makes some plays with his legs, he gets the ball out. Good for him.”
It's fair to say that the support system was a huge factor in Purdy's success. The 49ers have the NFL's pre-eminent offensive play-caller, an attack stuffed with diverse and dynamic playmakers and the league's best defense featuring All-Pros at every level.
But to say he would lose over half his games on any other team is to denigrate Purdy a little too much.
Purdy's stellar play was not simply a product of the scheme and talent around him, as his performance under pressure demonstrated. Among quarterbacks with at least 50 attempts under pressure, Purdy's positive play rate under duress of 42.9 percent was the best in the NFL, per Sports Info Solutions.
The argument can be made that those numbers are a symptom of Shanahan's ability to get his receivers into space and give Purdy easy buttons against pressure.
Shanahan's acumen in that regard was undoubtedly a factor, but Purdy's performance under pressure when there was no play-action or no motion to manipulate the coverage was not as bad as might have been expected.
His positive play rate on those 13 such attempts dipped significantly to 29.4 percent, but that was still much better than Deshaun Watson (15.4%) — ranked 11th on the tiers list — managed on 25 attempts.
A better illustration of Purdy's influence on the offensive production is what he did out of structure. The aforementioned offensive coach's comment that Purdy "made a few plays with his legs" undersells his efforts as a playmaker substantially.
Purdy had 26 attempts on the move last season, three more than Jimmy Garoppolo had while playing in three more regular-season games for the 49ers. But it isn't just that Purdy was more willing to make things happen on the move, it's that the production he delivered when on the run was substantially more efficient than that of his predecessor.
His positive play rate throwing on the move of 53.8 percent ranked fourth among all quarterbacks with at least 20 such attempts. By comparison, Garoppolo (39.1%) ranked 22nd.
On top of that, Purdy had more success with the more aggressive throws than Garoppolo. Purdy averaged 5.9 completed air yards per attempt to Garoppolo's 4.7 and, on throws past the sticks, his positive play rate of 65.7 percent was the best in the league (min. 50 attempts). Just half of Garoppolo's throws beyond the marker resulted in positive Expected Points Added (EPA).
The 49ers leading the NFL in EPA per play in the final five weeks of the regular season with Purdy as the starter was a product of several factors not related to Purdy, not least Shanahan's ability to scheme receivers open and a run game that improved markedly following the arrival of Christian McCaffrey.
But for all Shanahan's talents as a play-caller, the success of the offense was still dependent on Purdy making the correct reads and being decisive with the football. He excelled on both counts and clearly outperformed the quarterback he replaced in adding an extra dimension to the offense as a playmaker and producing superior efficiency on lower-percentage throws past the sticks.
It's too early to state firmly that Purdy should have been ranked higher on the tiers list, but it's also premature to say he would have struggled in another offense.
The qualities he displayed: poise under pressure, processing, decisiveness and prowess on second-reaction plays, translate to any offense in the league.
The challenge for Purdy is to reproduce them over the course of a full season. He'll be worthy of much more credit for his production and a higher position on next year's quarterback lists if he achieves that aim.
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There may have been an element of bias behind his pick.
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