{ "archive_path": "archive/1792444508.815412", "base_url": "www.natesilver.net/p/is-brock-purdy-the-nfls-best-quarterback", "basename": "is-brock-purdy-the-nfls-best-quarterback", "bookmarked_date": "2026-10-19 21:15", "canonical": { "archive_org_path": "https://web.archive.org/web/www.natesilver.net/p/is-brock-purdy-the-nfls-best-quarterback", "dom_path": "output.html", "favicon_path": "favicon.ico", "git_path": "git/", "google_favicon_path": "https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=www.natesilver.net", "headers_path": "headers.json", "htmltotext_path": "htmltotext.txt", "index_path": "index.html", "media_path": "media/", "mercury_path": "mercury/content.html", "pdf_path": "output.pdf", "readability_path": "readability/content.html", "screenshot_path": "screenshot.png", "singlefile_path": "singlefile.html", "warc_path": "warc/", "wget_path": "www.natesilver.net/p/is-brock-purdy-the-nfls-best-quarterback.html" }, "domain": "www.natesilver.net", "extension": "", "hash": "1GVXM7WSFRX0P50K29J3", "history": { "archive_org": [], "dom": [], "favicon": [ { "cmd": [ "curl", "--silent", "--location", "--compressed", "--max-time", "120", "--output", "favicon.ico", "--user-agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) curl/curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=www.natesilver.net" ], "cmd_version": "curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "end_ts": "2026-10-20T04:23:16.746029+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "favicon.ico", "pwd": "/data/archive/1792444508.815412", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-10-20T04:23:16.255740+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "git": [], "headers": [ { "cmd": [ "curl", "--silent", "--location", "--compressed", "--head", "--max-time", "120", "--user-agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) curl/curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "https://www.natesilver.net/p/is-brock-purdy-the-nfls-best-quarterback" ], "cmd_version": "curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "end_ts": "2026-10-20T04:23:17.316158+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "headers.json", "pwd": "/data/archive/1792444508.815412", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-10-20T04:23:16.757269+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "htmltotext": [], "media": [], "mercury": [ { "cmd": [ "/app/node_modules/@postlight/parser/cli.js", "https://www.natesilver.net/p/is-brock-purdy-the-nfls-best-quarterback" ], "cmd_version": "1.0.0", "end_ts": "2026-10-20T04:23:33.620504+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "mercury", "pwd": "/data/archive/1792444508.815412", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-10-20T04:23:29.346196+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "pdf": [], "readability": [ { "cmd": [ "/app/node_modules/readability-extractor/readability-extractor", "/tmp/tmpd_u8wh1s", "https://www.natesilver.net/p/is-brock-purdy-the-nfls-best-quarterback" ], "cmd_version": "0.0.11", "end_ts": "2026-10-20T04:23:29.330220+00:00", "index_texts": [ "Getty Images / Silver Bulletin illustrationIn 2022, after his senior season at Iowa State, Brock Purdy was selected with the 262nd and final pick of the NFL Draft, earning the distinction of being that year\u2019s \u201cMr. Irrelevant.\u201d I suppose the title is a bit cruel. Of all the things a player might hope to be called on the most important day of his life, irrelevant is probably at the bottom of the list. It\u2019s also, obviously, not an indicator of a long NFL career, especially in a premium position. Before Purdy, only five quarterbacks had ever been Mr. Irrelevant, and none of them ever completed a pass in an NFL game.We\u2019re moving to more frequent ELWAY and QBERT updates and have updated the projections and ratings based on Sunday\u2019s games. We\u2019ll update them again after Purdy completes his Monday Night start against the Commanders. For full access to our NFL (and midterms) projections, you can subscribe below.Only four years later, Purdy is achieving things that would have seemed laughable on his draft day: he\u2019s only five attempts away from qualifying as the NFL\u2019s all-time leader in passer rating, his Niners have an undefeated record, and he\u2019s firmly in the MVP conversation heading into Week 6. Should Purdy take home the trophy, there will be a lot of fanfare about his rise from the last pick to MVP. Purdy is only the second player drafted 200th or later to have a 100+ projected QBERT, which he attained entering Week 4 this season. I think Purdy is the NFL\u2019s most underrated player, despite years of success helming the 49ers offense. Some of it may simply be aesthetics: Purdy is soft-spoken, with a very grounded demeanor. His teammates describe him as exceedingly professional, which is great for team success, but not the quickest way to a million followers on Instagram. Still, I think there\u2019s more to it. It\u2019s said that everyone loves an underdog story, but the discourse around Purdy doesn\u2019t exactly support that. Based on most advanced statistics, Purdy\u2019s status as an elite quarterback should be unquestioned, but there are still many that think he\u2019s simply a product of head coach Kyle Shanahan\u2019s brilliant offense, not a uniquely talented driver. In football, being a \u201csystem quarterback\u201d carries a negative connotation, perhaps rightfully so. Quarterback performance is extremely contextual, and isolating ability from the system is an important part of awards discussions. It\u2019s also not hard to see why Purdy gets the system quarterback label. Shanahan\u2019s offenses have been monstrous since taking the reins in San Francisco, and almost all the quarterbacks that have played for him have seen a boost in their EPA per dropback.Upon further analysis, though, applying that narrative to Purdy turns out to be a bit misleading. According to PFF, Purdy has faced pressure more often than the average quarterback, but maintains a very low sack rate and very high adjusted completion rate.1 He\u2019s been even better at avoiding sacks this season. Through five games, Purdy has taken only three on 51 pressured dropbacks, a rate of 5.9 percent. And he hasn\u2019t accomplished that by abandoning any hope of moving the ball: his yards per attempt under pressure have increased from 5.5 last season to 7.0.There are caveats, naturally. Five games isn\u2019t very many, and pressure doesn\u2019t magically remove the offense from the equation. Having somewhere to throw the ball still helps you avoid a sack, and these numbers don\u2019t tell us exactly how Purdy would perform on a worse team. But they complicate the idea that his job consists entirely of standing in a clean pocket and throwing to an open receiver.Of course, I don\u2019t think that a coach\u2019s and quarterback\u2019s relationship necessarily needs to be zero-sum. Purdy would be worse off without Shanahan \u2014 one of the best offensive head coaches in league history \u2014 but how many quarterbacks would be able to execute Shanahan\u2019s schemes with such startling efficiency? It\u2019s entirely plausible that Purdy is a driving force behind the 49ers\u2019 offense \u2014 perhaps its primary one this season \u2014 and that Shanahan also knows how to call plays better than anyone in the league. As NFL legends have discussed, Purdy\u2019s ability to stay calm under pressure is something of a superpower, and while I do think at least some of his gaudy production comes from having a wide array of passing options on each snap, I think it\u2019d be unfair to discredit him too much. He wouldn\u2019t be the first great quarterback to play with a strong supporting cast.Why are so many people eager to discredit Purdy? I\u2019ve noticed, in my time observing sports discourse, that the average sports fan is often stereotyped as someone that impulsively reacts too quickly to new information. I\u2019ve found the opposite to be true more often. A lot of fans, whether or not they even realize it, tend to stick to their priors long after those priors have any practical use.Of course, those fans might feel justified in their anchoring. A quarterback barely getting drafted and then becoming the best player in the league sounds closer to Rudy than anything we\u2019d expect from football in the modern era. If Purdy\u2019s draft position accurately reflected his quality at the time, his story is one of outlier development. When creating QBERT, we found that a player\u2019s college stats predict \u2014 albeit not perfectly \u2014 their early NFL performance. Our college rating, which summarizes a quarterback\u2019s passing and rushing production, adjusts for strength of schedule. QBERT uses a version that models interceptions separately, alongside age and college experience, to help build a quarterback\u2019s initial NFL projection. College QBERT rated Purdy as one of the best quarterbacks in his draft class, and while he definitely wasn\u2019t a spectacular college player, he was both relatively young and productive compared to the other players in his class. Kenny Pickett, who was a year-and-a-half older than Purdy, put up a far lower adjusted college rating on his way to being selected with the 20th pick. Granted, Purdy\u2019s profile at Iowa State had some warts: his production fell off in his senior season, even though he was one of the best quarterbacks in the country as a freshman. After decomposing Purdy\u2019s senior season drop, though, much of it came as a result of his rushing production decreasing, while his passing production actually increased. Having spent time working on draft models in basketball, I\u2019m happy to point out that they\u2019re, in fact, quite fallible. College production isn\u2019t a complete description of a prospect, and there are both quantitative and qualitative factors that play a role in development. Our rating also puts Matt Corral and Malik Willis ahead of Purdy, neither of whom have had stable careers in the NFL thus far. But there\u2019s a difference between failing to identify a future superstar and having no reason to consider him a serious prospect.2In fact, Purdy\u2019s development doesn\u2019t look particularly unusual compared with that of other elite quarterbacks, such as Lamar Jackson, Patrick Mahomes, and Josh Allen. Before his first start, Purdy actually had a higher projected QBERT than any of the other three.While Purdy\u2019s \u201cunderdog\u201d story might make it hard for fans to see him as the true best quarterback in the world, he\u2019s certainly doing a lot right now to change that perception. According to Polymarket, Purdy is second-most likely MVP winner, and briefly took the lead before Josh Allen\u2019s monstrous game against the Rams. The other candidates, Patrick Mahomes and Trevor Lawrence, are third and fourth, respectively.Breaking down each candidate\u2019s adjusted QBERT, what stands out about Purdy is how many different ways he adds value. He moves the chains, produces yards through the air, and avoids the plays that send an offense backward. Allen has contributed considerably more as a runner, but Purdy has the stronger passing profile in this sample. His lead isn\u2019t coming from one statistical category doing all the work.Of course, we\u2019re five games in. It would be foolish to declare any player the MVP without the context of a full season. And while QBERT really does think Purdy is that good, it\u2019s obviously possible that his performance doesn\u2019t sustain itself. We do adjust for the strength of opponents, but 80 percent-plus of Purdy\u2019s QBERT WAR is from his games against the Dolphins and Cardinals, so he\u2019ll need to produce consistently over the next ten weeks in order to solidify his case.Purdy\u2019s draft position gave us a reason to be skeptical before he ever took an NFL snap. Four years later, we have much better information. That doesn\u2019t mean five games settle the MVP race. But his case should face the same scrutiny as Allen\u2019s or Mahomes\u2019s, without the additional burden of explaining how the last pick could possibly be this good. If he keeps playing this well, where he started should be an interesting detail in his acceptance speech, not a lingering objection to his receiving the trophy." ], "output": "readability", "pwd": "/data/archive/1792444508.815412", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-10-20T04:23:26.924252+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "screenshot": [], "singlefile": [], "title": [ { "cmd": [ "curl", "--silent", "--location", "--compressed", "--max-time", "120", "--user-agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) curl/curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "https://www.natesilver.net/p/is-brock-purdy-the-nfls-best-quarterback" ], "cmd_version": "curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "end_ts": "2026-10-20T04:23:26.914108+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "Is Brock Purdy the NFL\u2019s best quarterback?", "pwd": "/data/archive/1792444508.815412", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-10-20T04:23:26.852412+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "wget": [ { "cmd": [ "wget", "--no-verbose", "--adjust-extension", "--convert-links", "--force-directories", "--span-hosts", "--no-parent", "-e", "robots=off", "--reject=js,mjs,woff,woff2,ttf,otf,eot,mp4,m4v,mov,webm,ogv,mkv,avi,flv", "--timeout=120", "--restrict-file-names=windows", "--page-requisites", "--user-agent=Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) wget/GNU Wget 1.21.3", "--compression=auto", "--timestamping", "https://www.natesilver.net/p/is-brock-purdy-the-nfls-best-quarterback" ], "cmd_version": "GNU Wget 1.21.3", "end_ts": "2026-10-20T04:23:26.843326+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "www.natesilver.net/p/is-brock-purdy-the-nfls-best-quarterback.html", "pwd": "/data/archive/1792444508.815412", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-10-20T04:23:17.326811+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ] }, "icons": null, "is_archived": true, "is_static": false, "latest": { "archive_org": null, "dom": null, "favicon": "favicon.ico", "git": null, "media": null, "pdf": null, "screenshot": null, "singlefile": null, "title": "Is Brock Purdy the NFL\u2019s best quarterback?", "warc": null, "wget": "www.natesilver.net/p/is-brock-purdy-the-nfls-best-quarterback.html" }, "link_dir": "/data/archive/1792444508.815412", "newest_archive_date": "2026-10-20T04:23:29.346196+00:00", "num_failures": 0, "num_outputs": 6, "oldest_archive_date": "2026-10-20T04:23:16.255740+00:00", "path": "/p/is-brock-purdy-the-nfls-best-quarterback", "schema": "Link", "scheme": "https", "snapshot_id": "ae37e66b-e945-4ac1-b764-adabc5f9893e", "sources": [ "/data/sources/1792444508-import.txt" ], "tags": ",drudge,pool,war-wiki", "tags_str": "drudge,pool,war-wiki", "timestamp": "1792444508.815412", "title": "Is Brock Purdy the NFL\u2019s best quarterback?", "updated": "2026-10-20T04:23:16.255197+00:00", "updated_date": "2026-10-20 04:23", "url": "https://www.natesilver.net/p/is-brock-purdy-the-nfls-best-quarterback" }