In 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’s “Mr. Irrelevant.” 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’s 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.
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Only four years later, Purdy is achieving things that would have seemed laughable on his draft day: he’s only five attempts away from qualifying as the NFL’s all-time leader in passer rating, his Niners have an undefeated record, and he’s 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’s 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’s more to it. It’s said that everyone loves an underdog story, but the discourse around Purdy doesn’t exactly support that. Based on most advanced statistics, Purdy’s status as an elite quarterback should be unquestioned, but there are still many that think he’s simply a product of head coach Kyle Shanahan’s brilliant offense, not a uniquely talented driver.
Can anyone be coached into greatness?
In football, being a “system quarterback” 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’s also not hard to see why Purdy gets the system quarterback label. Shanahan’s 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’s 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’t 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’t very many, and pressure doesn’t magically remove the offense from the equation. Having somewhere to throw the ball still helps you avoid a sack, and these numbers don’t 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’t think that a coach’s and quarterback’s relationship necessarily needs to be zero-sum. Purdy would be worse off without Shanahan — one of the best offensive head coaches in league history — but how many quarterbacks would be able to execute Shanahan’s schemes with such startling efficiency? It’s entirely plausible that Purdy is a driving force behind the 49ers’ offense — perhaps its primary one this season — and that Shanahan also knows how to call plays better than anyone in the league. As NFL legends have discussed, Purdy’s 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’d be unfair to discredit him too much. He wouldn’t be the first great quarterback to play with a strong supporting cast.
Why are so many people eager to discredit Purdy? I’ve 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’ve 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.
Did Purdy always have it in him?
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’d expect from football in the modern era. If Purdy’s draft position accurately reflected his quality at the time, his story is one of outlier development. When creating QBERT, we found that a player’s college stats predict — albeit not perfectly — their early NFL performance. Our college rating, which summarizes a quarterback’s 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’s initial NFL projection.
College QBERT rated Purdy as one of the best quarterbacks in his draft class, and while he definitely wasn’t 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’s 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’s 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’m happy to point out that they’re, in fact, quite fallible. College production isn’t 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’s a difference between failing to identify a future superstar and having no reason to consider him a serious prospect.2
MVP or not, Purdy is one of the game’s best
In fact, Purdy’s development doesn’t 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’s “underdog” story might make it hard for fans to see him as the true best quarterback in the world, he’s 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’s monstrous game against the Rams. The other candidates, Patrick Mahomes and Trevor Lawrence, are third and fourth, respectively.
Breaking down each candidate’s 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’t coming from one statistical category doing all the work.
Of course, we’re 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’s obviously possible that his performance doesn’t sustain itself. We do adjust for the strength of opponents, but 80 percent-plus of Purdy’s QBERT WAR is from his games against the Dolphins and Cardinals, so he’ll need to produce consistently over the next ten weeks in order to solidify his case.
Purdy’s 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’t mean five games settle the MVP race. But his case should face the same scrutiny as Allen’s or Mahomes’s, 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.
Probably one of the single biggest “discoveries” we’ve made with QBERT is that sack rate is fairly persistent for quarterbacks, basically as persistent as most other stats. QBERT also adjusts its ratings based on pass pressure faced and running back yards per carry, so there’s some effort to adjust for the strength of the offensive line. But avoiding sacks is a skill, and an important one. Sacks aren’t quite as bad as interceptions, but they often end possessions, while also producing an elevated risk of fumbles and injuries. -Nate Silver
To be fair, our QBERT ratings in general for rookies are quite compressed, typically only varying by 10 points or so regardless of their college stats. And the large majority of rookies are projected to be replacement level or below in their first few starts. Perhaps relevantly for Purdy, we’ve also found that draft position doesn’t predict NFL QB efficiency at all, although it does influence how many opportunities a quarterback gets. The fact that quarterbacks are notoriously tough to predict seems like an argument for trusting Purdy’s production, though. In the NBA, we’ve found that draft position is still a useful predictor several years into a player’s career. And that’s also true for certain other NFL positions. Quarterback, though, is a position where you have to prove it, no matter your pedigree. Once you have “proven it,” though, there’s no particular reason to regress toward some prior. We’ve seen that before with examples like Tom Brady and Tony Romo and now we’re seeing it with Purdy. -Nate
What I know is that I got Purdy in the 11th Round of my fantasy draft and I’m winning my league.
Would love more content like this, also "why QBERT hates Caleb Williams"!