Film room: Assessing the 49ers quarterback situation part 5 - Where Brock Purdy needs to improve

Brock Purdy went from the last pick in the 7th round pick to the “clubhouse leader” for starting quarterback in 2023. To retain that position, here's where Purdy needs to improve this season.

In part 4 of this series, we looked at what Brock Purdy does well. In the previous articles, we took a look at what Trey Lance does well and what he needs to improve on. It’s taken way too long to get these articles done but they are finally finished. Yet we still do not really know who is going to start week one and still do not know what Brock’s status will actually be heading into camp though there have been reports that he’s been progressing ahead of schedule.

With all that said, we need to take a look at where he can and needs to improve if he wants to retain the QB1 spot and if the 49ers want to continue to on this offensive hot streak.

Where he needs to improve

Accuracy and putting the ball in harm’s way

Purdy’s biggest issue is with inaccurate and off-target passes and it’s rather remarkable his turnover rate stayed so low. There is no reason to expect or believe this will stay the same in 2023 and more often than not, the turnover luck eventually runs out and regresses back to the center.

For Purdy to retain the top quarterback spot and not drive Shanahan absolutely insane, he will have to cut down on the amount of passes he puts in harm’s way. In 2022, in his end of the season stretch, Purdy ranked 27th out of 39 quarterbacks in SIS Datahub’s “on-target” throw percentage among quarterbacks who registered at least 150 pass attempts with just 72.2% of his passes being deemed “on-target.”

Purdy lacks the arm strength to layer his passes over defenders and cannot afford to be late and force the ball into a bad situation. Nearly all of his off-target throws are a beat late, resulting in the ball being behind the receiver and allowing the defenders to get their hands on them.

On two plays versus Seattle in the wildcard game, Purdy tried to throw into tight windows and his lack of arm strength to drive the ball between defenders became very apparent. For a quarterback with a limited arm, the process to get to certain throws has to almost be perfect or near perfect, especially in a playoff game.

In the first throw, there’s nowhere to go with the pass after the snap. He did show an ability to scramble around and buy time which he could have done here but didn’t, or could have just thrown it away at their feet, which he also didn’t do.

In the second clip, he simply just didn’t have enough arm to thread the needle. Here you want to see the quarterback move and hold the middle linebacker with his eyes a tick longer if he’s going to rip the backside dig route. Otherwise he’d need Josh Allen arm strength to get it there at the moment he threw it.

The other concerning aspect of these passes was the coverage he was facing on these throws. In both of these throws, and in one later in this article, the defense was playing cover-1 lurk/hole where they would drop a linebacker into the throwing lane in the middle of the field and compress the windows he had to throw into. This will likely be a coverage they will see a lot of next season if Purdy is the starter.

For a quarterback recovering from a major injury and surgery to his throwing arm, he cannot afford to be late with these passes, placing vastly more importance on anticipation, timing, and rhythm, which he showed he can do. And he was insanely lucky with the lack of turnovers despite numerous defenders getting hands on his passes.

Purdy was only charged with 7 “turnover worthy plays” meaning there were only 7 passes that were deemed “turnover worthy” (he was charged with 0 fumbles despite the fumble in the NFCCG) because those were passes that were legitimately dropped by defenders or intercepted. It doesn’t include all the passes that hit defenders in the hands on their way to the receiver because they’re not deemed catchable.

A concern going into 2023 is how his arm strength and injury recovery is going to affect his ability to drive the ball downfield into tight windows, a thing he already struggled with pre-injury.

Play action pass recognition and timing

2022 wildcard, 1st quarter, 12:35 remaining

On the first drive of the game versus Seattle in the wildcard round, Purdy had two late misses and third late read in the 2nd quarter that cost the 49ers some points and yards.

The play call was a basic high-low with a high corner route and a deep crosser underneath. It was the perfect play call to open the game and it showed the 49ers what the Seattle defensive game plan would be for the majority of the game. The play call gives the quarterback the ultimate defined read as it would basically put the intermediate linebackers in an immediate bind as they tried to locate the crossers.

Typically, the routes on this play would be flipped with the dig/crosser coming from the left and the corner coming from the right. Shanahan knows that when this happens, the linebackers will “robot” (roll over and back) to locate the crossing route.

If they see zone run action one way, they will “roll over” their back shoulder and turn to locate the crossing route from that side of the formation. Knowing this, Shanahan flipped the routes to put the underneath defenders in a bind when they couldn’t find the crossing route.

Purdy has a wide open window when he gets to the top of his drop but bounds up and down a couple of times as Deebo is crossing the field. That ball should be gone when he’s starting his break across the mid field logo. Instead Purdy is late and throws a pass that gets away from him as hurries to get it downfield.

2023 Wildcard, 1st quarter, 11:12 remaining

In the wildcard playoff game versus Seattle, the 49ers and Kyle Shanahan gave Seattle a heavy dose of play action passes to get receivers open and take advantage of some of the schematic weaknesses in the Seahawks defense. On this particular play, the 49ers are running play action off their pistol counter run concept.

Jennings is tight to the offensive line, a signal that he’s going to crack block the linebacker coming downhill, something the 49ers do with Jennings a lot, and something he’s very good at. He’s going to simulate the stalk block off the run action and take off downfield on a pylon corner route.

The Seahawks crash hard on the run action especially as the pullers come around. As the linebackers fit up on the line of scrimmage, Jennings takes off downfield. The corner is caught on an island as Purdy drops back and reads the progressions.

They defended it decently well initially with linebacker Cody Barton sitting in the throwing window of the dig route so Purdy moves to the corner route and had to wait an extra second to throw as he loaded up his arm to heave it downfield.

He still left it short. This is where having a weaker arm can hurt a quarterback who needs to rely on timing. It takes him a second longer to load the throw than a stronger armed quarterback and it allows the corner to recover. 

Perhaps the biggest area of improvement that Purdy can make is in reading out the progression and throwing on time on straight drop back play action passes. Several times this season, most notably in the playoffs, Purdy was late on throws or inaccurate, costing the 49ers points and yards in the process. And it cost him his chance to keep the starting quarterback job when he was injured in the NFC Championship game.

2022 week 17, 2nd quarter, 14:09 remaining

Against the Raiders in week 17, Purdy had a golden opportunity to hit an explosive pass play on a play action dagger concept but instead threw the pass into coverage, one that he was very fortunate wasn’t a turnover and instead drew a pass interference penalty.

Purdy motions Aiyuk over from left to right before snapping the ball with Aiyuk on the dagger route and Kittle from the inline tight end spot on the deep crossing route. The dagger concept progressions go from the crosser #1 to the dagger #2.

Purdy drops back and turns back around to locate his reads.

When Purdy sees the defender’s nameplate and back to him, his receiver is open. Any time that defender’s back is to the quarterback, that ball has to be thrown because the defender is not in a position to make a play. The Raiders get caught in a 3-deep/3-under fire zone and the middle linebacker is late picking up Kittle across the field.

Purdy looked off the throw to Kittle and came back to Aiyuk as he was being shoved to the turf. He still threw it, drawing the DPI. He had a clean pocket and needed to pull the trigger to Kittle though and that’s where the ball needed to go.

Week 17, 3rd quarter, 2:33 remaining

On his interception in the 3rd quarter of this game, his lack of arm strength and lack of timing really showed up. Plus his overall awareness of where he needed to set up and throw was off.

He did not see the corner drifting under the corner post route by Kittle deep down the middle of the field. Plus ends up about 8 yards outside the hash for the throw and drifts away from it when he should be about 3 yards outside the hash for throw. This makes the throw much more difficult to get downfield and throws off the timing.

Non-play action pass anticipation and timing

On non-play action passing, Purdy largely didn’t trust what he was looking and as a result, struggled reading his progressions and taking the easy throws.

Week 17 2022, 1st quarter, 1:38 remaining

Purdy can be impatient at times and not realize he has a clean pocket to make his reads from.

The play call here is a dig with a spot route underneath it. The intent is to hi-low the strong hook defender here, linebacker #56, in the cover-3 coverage.

The Raiders are in cover-3.

Purdy should be reading the drop of #56. He tells you where to go with the ball  by his eyes (he's reading the QB) and his positioning (flat-footed, parallel to the LOS). Aiyuk is coming open in the window over the middle of the field and he would have a decent gain. Purdy telegraphs the pass the whole way and gets it batted down at the line of scrimmage.

Quarterbacks can help their offensive line by not staring down their primary read. If a defensive lineman can’t get to the passer, he’s going to look to bat the pass down and that’s what happens here.

Week 17 2022, 2nd quarter, 15:00 remaining

This play shows both bad pre-snap awareness and impatient post-snap progression reading.

The play call is “double swirl” with 7-stop or corner-stop routes by the outside receivers. It’s a staple mirrored passing concept in Shanahan’s passing offense.

The Raiders bail pre-snap to Tampa-2 coverage from a single high safety shell.

Purdy gets Aiyuk matched on a slower safety in his pre-snap read and that should clue him into the coverage distribution (safety has the flat no matter what here) and best match-up. Purdy sees the rotation to Tampa-2 post-snap, which makes the other side a good option too with the mirrored swirl routes in the cover-2 zone.

Even if he doesn't look to Aiyuk, he has a window to the other receiver, Jauan Jennings, but takes the checkdown. He had a clean pocket to set up and throw from too.

Pocket presence

Purdy’s ability to scramble around and make plays with his legs was supposed to be the skill that Trey Lance brought to the table. This can be a huge boost to the offense but at other times can be a burden if the quarterback tries to make something out of nothing instead of recognizing throws in the progression, which lead to sacks or scrambles for minimal gain.

Sometimes the quarterback gets lucky with an off-schedule throw even when the off-schedule play was unnecessary. Versus the Raiders in week 17, while Purdy undoubtedly made a good play and the offense scored points, it was play that did not need to occur because the first read in his progression was open for a touchdown and it was something Shanahan made sure to remind him of after.

In an interview with KNBR, John Lynch stated that despite scoring, Shanahan was visibly upset with Brock because he deviated from the process, what would’ve been a relatively easy touchdown to Jennings as the first read, in favor of ad-libbing and extending the play.

“Brock came off (Jennings), for whatever reason. That’s unlike him, because nine times out of 10, this kid makes the right decision. (But this time,) he anticipates. He decides to extend the play. Hits Kittle in the back of the end zone, and I was watching Kyle on the sidelines. Kyle is staring down Brock. Kyle can do that sometimes: it’s not the outcome, he wants the process to be right.”

Lynch says eventually Kyle had a good chuckle about it afterwards but it highlights two things: 1) those kinds of plays will not happen very often even if the quarterback has the ability to go off schedule and 2) because of this, it’s imperative the quarterback learn to stay in the pocket and scan his reads before going off script and exhausting all options.

Jennings is the point man in the trips at the bottom of the screen here. He’s the #1 in the progression running a return route (reverse pivot route). Purdy drops back looking to his right but impatiently comes off the read. The pocket is clean and he would have only needed to step up/hitch once to hit Jennings for the easy touchdown. Instead, he made the play unnecessarily harder on himself and his offense by leaving a clean pocket and scrambling to his left.

He’s very fortunate to have had Kittle there to catch what was an otherwise great pass. It was just unnecessary and you can understand why Kyle was mad initially. There was no reason to take this risk on a 3rd down play in a game that ended up being decided by 3 points. A field goal here would’ve put that outcome in serious jeopardy.

In the wildcard game versus Seattle, as shown above, Purdy got off to a rocky start, putting several passes in harm's way and misfiring on others. He also took an unnecessary sack and didn’t step up into a clean pocket on another pass and instead escaped and tried to go off-script to make heroics happen.

The play progression goes from McCaffrey out of the backfield on the choice route to Kittle down the seam. The Seahawks are in straight man coverage with a four man rush with a low zone dropper. The low zone dropper takes away Purdy’s read to McCaffrey but Purdy has a clean pocket and at this point the pass protection has held up well. Purdy then needs to hitch/climb the pocket and fire a pass down the middle to Kittle. He looks there too and Kittle has about one to two yards of separation on the safety in-trail.

Instead, he escapes the pocket as he feels phantom pressure and nearly runs himself into a sack. Fortunately, he’s athletic and mobile enough to avoid disaster here and gets outside enough to throw the pass away. He ends up paying the price for this too as soon as he releases the ball if you look close enough.

Outlook

Time and time again, fans ask me why I am so hard on young quarterbacks, why I hate Purdy, or why I refuse to give him any credit. Nothing could be further from the truth. I don’t hate Purdy at all and I think what Purdy did last season was astonishing for a 7th round rookie. He made plays and looked better at times than Jimmy Garoppolo did and I think he’s probably earned the right to start and be QB1.

But if he’s going to be the starter, and get back to nearly the same levels as he was at pre-injury, then he’s going to need to improve on these issues because he won’t be so lucky with the turnover rate and dropped interceptions, among other things, and he won’t be so lucky if he willingly deviates from the script/process because teams will be prepared for his tendencies. I fear the NFL may catch up to him quicker than he can adjust to solely because he’s missed the entire offseason and there’s no set date for his return in training camp or the preseason.

I think fans need to pump the brakes a bit and see what this kid can or cannot do over the course of a full 17 game season. I don’t think that’s controversial to say, and I don’t think his 8 game run was as good as it appeared at first. But that doesn’t mean he can’t or won’t get better. It just means that he needs to adjust and he’s going to have to do with live rounds come week one after basically having no reps to run through it. That won’t be easy, but the kid has a level of confidence (and probably the right amount of cockiness and arrogance) not typically seen in a player of his status.