We’ve been talking about both the suffocating defense and Brock Purdy’s effectiveness in the San Francisco 49ers’ Week 1 victory over the Los Angeles Rams. Here, we’re going to do a bit more on the former, because there’s a nice Brock Purdy stat to bring up here, if you don’t mind.
With his 25-for-34 passing (73 percent completions), Brock Purdy now has the highest completion percentage of any NFL quarterback in their first 50 starts. In his 50 starts, he has 68.1 percent completions, putting him at first. I managed to dig up a chart of who he’s in front of:
I agree with this guy; that’s unheard of from a 7th-round pick. Now, one-tenth of a percentage point isn’t that much of a lead, but the guy he’s over, Joe Burrow, should say something about the company he’s keeping.
Is this really record-breaking history? Well, when you see who else is on it- namely Jimmy Garoppolo and Tua Tagovailoa it’s not exactly a list of Hall of Famers. Having the likes of Kurt Warner is. It’s probably also fair to note that while Purdy is one-tenth of a percentage point ahead of Burrow, his yards and touchdowns are less, but his interceptions are slightly more.
This isn’t so much a knock on Purdy; it’s more that when you see Tagovailoa and Garoppolo on the same list, you know this is a characteristic of the Kyle Shanahan offense. There are a lot of short passes, and we all know how good Jimmy Garoppolo was on a certain kind of throw. In fact, that’s proven even more when you see how few yards Garoppolo has compared to everyone else.
Regardless, completion percentage is completion percentage, and in his first 50 games, Brock Purdy has shown he is one of the most accurate quarterbacks in the league. He also did this in 50 games when he was sometimes without his all-star cast of pass-catchers.
In the Rams win, Purdy threw a single interception, a throw into quadruple coverage to tight end George Kittle. A throw Kittle appreciated nevertheless:
Purdy also has this dime to Demarcus Robinson, which turns out to be his longest completion by air yards of his career.
All of this is more evidence that Brock Purdy is that good. With or without loaded talent around them, being that accurate isn’t very common. Add all the other stats he’s leading, and one has to wonder why people keep moving the goalposts.