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

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.

Purdy needs to speed up his process.

(Kelley L Cox-USA TODAY Sports)

It should come as no surprise that Purdy left some meat on the bone with Shanahan’s route concepts — there were times when he just didn’t see things as quickly as he needed to if the play was going to happen as it was idealized. This is far from a professional death sentence for a young quarterback, and given the issues both Garoppolo and Lance have had seeing and throwing to spots on time, it’s also not automatic that this will doom the 49ers.

On Purdy’s third throw of the day, an attempted post to Deebo Samuel on second-and-10 from the Miami 29 with 6:42 left in the first quarter, Purdy let the ball go just a hair late from a clean pocket, which allowed cornerback Xavien Howard to catch up out of Cover-1. It looks as if Purdy was reading George Kittle on the crosser from right to left first, and then whipped around to read where Samuel was. Maybe the assumption (and it’s generally a pretty good one) was that Samuel would be open no matter what, but Purdy was a split second away from a highlight touchdown pass here.

One assumes that a week of preparation as the starter won’t cure this — it’ll take time for Purdy to deal with NFL speed. It wasn’t a fatal flaw; just something to watch as the games go on.

Handling pressure.

(Kelley L Cox-USA TODAY Sports)

Purdy was pressured (hit or hurried) on 16 of his dropbacks in addition to his three sacks, and he completed six of 13 passes for 30 yards, neither of his two touchdowns, and his one interception. He got himself into pressure at times, but the Dolphins were also blitzing a ton (as is their wont), and San Francisco’s protections didn’t always deal well with it. Miami had six or more pass-rushers on six of those pressured dropbacks, and Purdy completed just one of five passes under pressure from the blitz. Shanahan mentioned after the game that the Dolphins did a nice job of combining pressure with taking away Purdy’s hot reads, and that shows up on tape.

The interception was also by Howard, and it came with 5:17 left in the second quarter. The 49ers had fourth-and-4 from the Miami 39-yard line. The game was tied 10-10, so this was more than just a “Let’s see what the kid can do” rep. The Dolphins sent six pass-rushers with Cover-1 in the back, and safety Javon Holland came in free off the defensive left edge.

Maybe you change the protection rules at the line to have Christian McCaffrey stay in the backfield in a situation like this; I don’t know. But Purdy had to make a boundary throw to Brandon Aiyuk with pressure in his face, and Howard draped all over Aiyuk through the route. Perhaps Purdy should have thrown to McCaffrey as he released out of the backfield? The routes and coverage dictated that McCaffrey had a cow pasture in front of him, but we learn as we go.

With a week of starter install, Shanahan and his coaches can give Purdy more insight into this process. I do not know if (or how often) Garoppolo called the protections, so this will be interesting to monitor. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers (who the 49ers play next Sunday) have blitzed on 28.3% of their snaps this season, the eighth-highest rate in the NFL, and it would not surprise me if Todd Bowles and his staff called as many blitzes as they felt appropriate to see how the 49ers will respond.

The plays that mattered.

(Kelley L Cox-USA TODAY Sports)

With 1:19 left in the first half, and the score still tied 10-10, the Dolphins pushed eight potential pass-rushers to the line of scrimmage with Cover-3 in the back. Both Shanahan and Purdy talked about all the Cover-0 the Dolphins played, and how often they blitzed out of it, but that minimizes the complexity of coverage Purdy saw, which adds an impressive element to his first real time in the barrel.

From his own 35-yard line, Purdy recognized the blitz, called for a quicker adjustment to Kittle’s post route, and got the ball to his tight end despite getting absolutely ‘faced by an unblocked Jaelan Phillips.

The next play was that touchdown pass. Now, McCaffrey ran outside with Aiyuk and Kittle setting him up as blockers, and Purdy made the throw on time.

“After the touchdown,” Purdy told King, “Christian came to me and said, ‘Thanks for believing in me and trusting me to make the play.’ That’s pretty wild. I mean, saying that to me. I grew up watching him. Now, I’m on his team, throwing him a touchdown pass. Wild.”

It was wild. but it was also on time. It showed how Purdy wasn’t overwhelmed by the process, and how he was able to gain the trust of his teammates in a fractious situation. That’s not everything, but it’s something.

Where things go from here.

(Sergio Estrada-USA TODAY Sports)

There won’t be much of a Victory Monday for Shanahan, quarterbacks coach Brian Griese, assistant quarterbacks coach Klay Kubiak, and passing game coordinator Bobby Slowik. Or for Purdy, for that matter. They have a week to get Purdy ready as the starter, which means going over what can be fixed in seven days, and aligning the concepts with what Purdy likes best and does best.

“I think we struggled at it at times,” Shanahan said of getting the plays in and executed on time. “I think you saw us call a little more time outs than we usually do. Fortunately, it didn’t come back to harm us at the end, but yeah, there was a few times where just the communication between the ear, the headset and all that stuff. You never know until they come out of the huddle and when they come out in a completely different play than what you called that’s when there’s a hearing issue, a speaking issue and those are the things we have to get better at.”

Shanahan already knows that Purdy has no issue taking deeper shots, especially deeper shots over the middle, which has never been a Garoppolo strength.

“Brock naturally looks a lot more often for the deeper one than the shorter one, which is awesome. Sometimes it helped today and a couple early, I thought he missed. Just having someone quick right there and just trying to look for something deeper and then running out of time to come back to the short one, so you like that about a guy’s personality. You want that much more than the other way and now it’s about playing, getting the guy experience. He got a lot of experience in college, but this is really his first NFL game here and he’s going to get a lot more going forward.”

The process of reading all that stuff? As much as Purdy looked comfortable with it for the most part, it may be now about giving him easier stuff to deal with underneath and getting him in rhythm.

But again, here’s the thing about the 49ers as they’re currently constructed: They do not need their quarterback to be great to be great as a team. If Purdy is able to do what he did against the Buccaneers, Seattle Seahawks, Washington Commanders, Las Vegas Raiders, and Arizona Cardinals to finish the regular season, that’ll work. And right now, the only top-10 defense (per DVOA) Purdy will face as a starter is Buccaneers defense he’ll deal with next Sunday.

Is this an ideal situation for the 49ers? Hardly. But it’s also not the knockout blow to their postseason hopes it would be for so many other quarterback-dependent teams.

Story originally appeared on Touchdown Wire