The B-Gap: Brock Purdy’s biggest strength is that he has nothing to lose

By Sam Robb O’Hagan

There was a throw in the San Francisco 49ers’ 33-17 win over the Miami Dolphins that stood out in even the most over-stimulating of Sundays on NFL RedZone.

It was a desperate heave in the face of a devastating hit from a free rusher, the type of situation that would usually call for a mindless yank towards the sideline, but this time was different. The ball didn’t sail towards the sidelines, instead zipping into the hands of 49ers’ tight end George Kittle, who had found a pocket of space in the middle of the field behind a dropping linebacker and a rotating slot cornerback. 

It was a remarkable pass, the kind that feels like the exact decision quarterbacks are told not to make: A blind, overly-confident prayer that could so easily have been taken the other way, and it all happened so fast.

So fast that if you weren’t paying close enough attention, you might just have missed the number of the quarterback who threw it.

Against the backdrop of the 49ers most spirited defensive statement of the season — a win against one of the league’s best offenses that included two interceptions and a strip-sack returned for a touchdown — the elephant on the other side of the ball didn’t take center stage at Levi’s Stadium like it usually might.

That is the absence of quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo, who left the game less than five minutes in following a gruesome ankle twist that, at best, looked like it would keep the experienced and reliable signal-caller on the sidelines for multiple weeks.

Yet the bouncing mood in Santa Clara, which the cart carrying Garoppolo off the field could so easily have taken with it, remained full of life. 

Invigorated by the defense’s silencing of Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa, and buoyed by the offense’s mostly seamless transition to third-string quarterback Brock Purdy, Kyle Shanahan’s team ensured the immediate postgame takeaways left no room for their injured starting quarterback.

That lasted all of about half an hour, after which Shanahan was forced to announce that Garoppolo’s foot injury will likely require him to miss the rest of the season. 

Down went the 31-year-old, the second 49ers’ starting quarterback to lose his 2022 season to injury, and with him the Super Bowl hype that both the offense and defense had done so well to rekindle over their now five-game win streak.

Shanahan’s reluctant diagnosis made Purdy, who’d taken the mandatory “Mr. Irrelevant” baton into his rookie season as the very last pick of the NFL draft, suddenly the most relevant player in San Francisco.

The former four-year starter at Iowa State, who played his first NFL regular season football on Sunday, is now the unthinkable leader of a team with a 97% chance to make the playoffs, according to the New York Times’ playoff simulator.

It is wholly necessary to preface any conversation about the trying months that lie ahead for Purdy by acknowledging that he is probably going to fail.

There has been just one rookie quarterback drafted in the seventh round or later, in the last 72 years of professional football, that has started a playoff game. That was beloved NFL underdog Doug Flutie in the 1986 playoffs, in a Chicago Bears loss to Washington. 

When Purdy makes history in January, it won’t be the kind of history that anyone in San Francisco would have signed off on before the season. It will be the type of record that is reflective of a dire, near-worst-case-scenario situation — much like Chicago all of those years ago, when Flutie was the fourth quarterback to start a game for the Bears in the 1986 season before his playoff loss.

There are a thousand different ways this could go wrong. Maybe the talent level of Purdy, deemed by 31 NFL teams to be unworthy of a draft pick, will confirm itself as too limiting to overcome. Maybe his inexperience will derail the offense in the series of high-stakes encounters his 49ers are staring at. Maybe his relative unfamiliarity with the superstars of a timing, chemistry-based offense that Garoppolo had mastered might be too great of a hindrance. 

And maybe, if Purdy manages to clear all of those hurdles, the inevitable rookie mistakes might not be few and far enough between.

Yet here Purdy is, about to become the second man ever this inexperienced and this doubted to start a playoff game; and here the 49ers are, about to become the second team ever to put their immense talent in his hands.

Purdy was largely a game manager in relief of Garoppolo on Sunday, surrendering the offensive control to Shanahan as merit would call for. Purdy dinked and dunked his way down the field at his play-caller’s will, getting the ball out quickly and on-time, allowing San Francisco’s superstar playmakers to do the rest. 

Running back Christian McCaffrey finished with eight catches for 80 yards and a touchdown; wide receivers Brandon Aiyuk and Deebo Samuel combined for 11 catches and 104 yards. Together, the trio were targeted 29 times, comfortably the most in the six games since McCaffrey’s acquisition.

According to Pro Football Focus, Purdy’s average depth of target on his 37 passes was just 5.4 yards. It was an efficient, safe offensive performance that took the game out of Purdy’s hands and onto the shoulders of the 49ers tried-and-trusted formula: Get the ball out quick, stretch the defense horizontally and allow yards after the catch to carry the team down the field. 

The training wheels were certainly on, but to his credit, Purdy looked remarkably composed, at some points undeniably confident. 

That confidence will be the key. The training wheels are going to come off, no matter if Shanahan takes them off or playoff defenses do it for him. The 49ers’ formula works, but not when it stands alone. Their offensive performance on Sunday may have been safe and efficient, but it was also worryingly predictable.

Defenses know the 49ers want to get the ball out of Purdy’s hands as fast as possible, on the assumption that he isn’t capable of anything further (which very well might be true). Screens, quick run-pass options (RPOs) and handoffs to McCaffrey, Aiyuk and Samuel are all incredibly effective, low-risk, high-reward plays. When defenses can safely assume that they’re coming, and therefore sell out to stop them? Not so much.

Purdy is going to see more blitzes, stacked boxes, single-high safety looks and cornerbacks ready to tee off on outside screens than Garoppolo ever did, all of it designed to force Purdy to make difficult throws down the field.

Shanahan’s fingerprints will still be all over the offense, as they always are, and most of the downfield throws that Purdy will have to attempt will still be a schematic product. The 49ers aren’t going to ask Purdy to progress through reads and decipher defenses post-snap because, to put it bluntly, they know he can’t. His responsibilities will very much be see throw, hit throw — a sequence of actions that Shanahan will predetermine for him as he squeezes every bit of instruction he can into his earpiece before it shuts off.

And Purdy is just going to have to trust it. Trust what he sees and believe what he’s told. He can’t hesitate, and he can’t second guess himself. He just has to go. 

If he’s told to throw a 50/50 ball to Aiyuk on fourth down, put the rock in the air. If he’s told to find Kittle over the middle behind a dropping linebacker, let it rip.

There’s an old saying in football: If you’re going to make mistakes, make them fast.

And Purdy is going to make mistakes; much like he did on Sunday when he was told to throw a 50/50 ball to Aiyuk, which turned into a horribly placed pass that Dolphins corner Xavien Howard calmly intercepted.

But if Purdy can keep playing fast and trusting the offensive structure that’s put around him, like he did on that interception to Howard, but also on that middle field throw to Kittle, which turned into the most important third-down conversion of the game, the 49ers will have a chance.

Purdy is a lot of things. Chief among them, he’s a player who is now punching way above his weight. He wasn’t supposed to be here. This opportunity, to quarterback the uber-talented 49ers on their path into the playoffs, was never meant for him.

But here he stands, with the opportunity to become the first quarterback drafted as late as he was to win a playoff game as young as he is. If he fails, which an unforgiving combination of history and common sense says he will, he’ll return right back to where he always was, waiting for the next opportunity that only a devastating injury will thrust him into.

He has nothing to lose, and if he can turn that into fearless, confident, and above-all, trusting football, it just might be his biggest strength.