Tag: brock purdy mr. irrelevant

How 49ers rookie QB Brock Purdy can continue his miracle season in the playoffs

49ers rookie quarterback Brock Purdy enjoyed a regular season that nobody expected. Here’s how he can continue it in the playoffs.

Brock Purdy, also known as “Mr. Irrelevant,” was the very last pick in the 2022 NFL draft. He started the season as a third-string quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, but this weekend, he has a chance to win a playoff game.

Since becoming a starter in week 14, Purdy has been playing better than expected. He’s 5-0 and sitting first in the league in: passer rating (119.0), passing touchdowns (11), passing touchdowns per attempt (8.9%), and passing yards per attempt (8.85).

The first team Purdy gets to face off against in the playoff is a Seahawks team that he is already familiar with; as he beat them 21 to 13 back in Week 15.

Let’s dive into the film and see if the San Francisco 49ers offense has changed since their last matchup; and how Purdy is going to lead the 49ers offense to a win in this weekend’s wild-card round.

Brock Purdy’s new role isn’t an automatic out for 49ers’ postseason hopes

Can Brock Purdy help the 49ers get where they want to go in the postseason? The 49ers are better-prepared than most for this new reality.

With 4:57 left in the first quarter of the San Francisco 49ers’s Sunday game against the Miami Dolphins, the 49ers made a bit of pro football history. Rookie third-string quarterback Brock Purdy from Iowa State, the last player selected in the 2022 NFL draft, threw a three-yard touchdown pass to fullback Kyle Juszczyk.

Not only was this the first touchdown pass ever thrown in a pro football regular season by a “Mr. Irrelevant” quarterback, Purdy continued his streak as the only last-drafted player to even throw a pass in the regular season. Six quarterbacks before Purdy had been selected with the final picks in their drafts, and none of them had ever thrown a pass in a regular-season game.

  • George Haffner, 1965 Baltimore Colts, McNeese State
  • Randy Essington, 1984 Los Angeles Raiders, Colorado
  • Larry Wanke, 1991 New York Giants, John Carroll
  • Ronnie McAda, 1997 Green Bay Packers, Army
  • Chandler Harnish, 2012 Indianapolis Colts, Northern Illinois
  • Chad Kelly, 2017 Denver Broncos, Ole Miss

Kelly was the only other quarterback to even see the field in a regular-season game, and his only play was a kneel-down at the end of the first half in a 23-20 loss to the Los Angeles Rams in 2018.

Then, Jimmy Garoppolo suffered what turned out to be a season-ending foot injury with 11:22 left in that same first quarter. Trey Lance had already been lost for the season to a September ankle injury, so it was Purdy or bust. This was a guy who threw eight interceptions to 19 touchdowns in his final season at Iowa State, completed 30 of 49 passes for 346 yards, one touchdown, and one interceptions in the preseason, and completed four of nine passes for 66 yards, no touchdowns, and one interceptions in mop-up duty in San Francisco’s 44-23 Week 7 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs.

So, if you didn’t expect much in this game, nobody could blame you.

Somehow, Purdy came in against the Dolphins with a reasonable command of one of the NFL’s most complex offenses. He completed 25 pf 37 passes for 210 yards, two touchdowns, one interception, and a passer rating of 88.8. Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa faced a much tougher defense than Purdy did, but Purdy actually outperformed the MVP favorite (18 of 33 for 295 yards, two touchdowns, two interceptions, and a passer rating of 79.7) from a pure passing perspective.

“Brock came in and made some big plays, he’s got some balls out there, forgive me for saying it that way,” 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan said it (that way) after the game. “We have to clean some stuff up, obviously, but just throwing him in there in the heat of battle like that, how much zero [Cover-0] that team did too, which you guys could see, that was a big plan of theirs and they had some good adjustments, taking away some of our hot throws, so we were having to change a lot of stuff on the fly. Putting a lot of pressure on him in that way and I thought he did a hell of a job doing it. Protected the ball well and made some big plays that I thought weren’t there always.”

The 49ers signed veteran quarterback Josh Johnson after the game, which means that Johnson now gets his fourth stint with the team since 2012. As Johnson has never thrown a regular-season pass for the 49ers in any of those stints, this is now Purdy’s job to lose, and the pressure in that job is pretty decent. The 49ers went to 8-4 with their 33-17 win, they currently stand with the third seed in the NFC playoff race, and they have everything you want in a Super Bowl contender from a run game and defensive perspective.

The stuff they need to clean up with Purdy was pretty evident on the tape, but it’s not as if the 49ers require a transcendent quarterback to make it to (or near) a Super Bowl. They made it to Super Bowl LIV with Garoppolo, and they were a few plays from beating the Rams in the 2021 NFC Championship game and going back to the Super Bowl with Garoppolo. The advantage the 49ers have is that they’re not built to need a top-10 (or even a top-20) quarterback to succeed. They’ve thrown more than the two touchdown passes Purdy threw just once this season, when Garoppolo scalded the Arizona Cardinals for four touchdowns in Week 11.

Now that Brock Purdy is the guy — at least in the short term — let’s get into the tape and see if he can be more than a one-week, feel-good story.

49ers QB Brock Purdy might be the most relevant Mr. Irrelevant ever

49ers backup QB Brock Purdy was the final player selected in 2022 draft. But in a win against the Dolphins, Purdy proved to be anything but Mr. Irrelevant.

When you are the final player selected in a draft, not much is expected of you. Through pro football history, the list of last-drafted players — known as “Mr. Irrelevant” for decades — isn’t all that distinguished. You could argue that Tyrone McGriff, the guard from Florida A&M selected by the Pittsburgh Steelers with the 333rd pick in the 12th round of the 1980 draft, was the most successful. McGriff played just three NFL seasons, but he was named to the 1980 NFL All-Rookie team, which is nice. The most successful Mr. Irrelevant in recent years has been kicker Ryan Succop, selected out of South Carolina by the Kansas City Chiefs with the 256th pick of the 2009 draft. Succop is still in the NFL, doing well for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and he’s got a Super Bowl ring for his work with the 2020 Bucs.

That said, the most recent Mr. Irrelevant might be the most important to date. San Francisco 49ers backup quarterback Brock Purdy, who the 49ers took with the 262nd pick in the 2022 draft out of Iowa State, had himself quite the game on Sunday against the Miami Dolphins after Jimmy Garoppolo exited the game in the first quarter. Garoppolo was carted off the field after he was sacked by Dolphins edge-rusher Jaelan Phillips with 11:22 left in the first quarter, and Purdy — who had completed four of nine passes for 66 yards, no touchdowns, and one interception in mop-up duty San Francisco’s 44-23 Week 7 loss to the Chiefs in his only regular-season action to date — turned things around pretty decisively.

It didn’t take long for Purdy to prove that he could run the offense. With 4:52 left in the first quarter, he zinged this three-yard touchdown pass to fullback Kyle Juszczyk, allowing Purdy to make a bit of pro football history.

Purdy impressed at least one former 49ers defender with some high quarterback standards.

In the end, and in a crucial 33-17 win that pushed his team to 8-4 on the season, Purdy completed 25 of 37 passes for 210 yards, two touchdowns, one interception, and a passer rating of 88.8.

And with the unfortunate news that Garoppolo’s ankle injury is season-ending, Purdy will become the first Mr. Irrelevant to start a game at quarterback. Next Sunday. Against Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Purdy seems unfazed by the idea.

So… yeah. Go ahead and crown him, NFL.