49ers’ Brock Purdy still hasn’t convinced national pundit he’s good

The San Francisco 49ers’ offense has been rolling on the way to a 4-0 start, scoring at least 30 points in each of those wins with Brock Purdy at the helm.

That’s apparently not enough to be considered among the top quarterbacks in the league, according to The Ringer’s latest quarterback rankings. The living, breathing list was most recently updated Wednesday, and while Purdy’s position improved, he went from the 27th-best quarterback to the 25th-best.

This puts him behind the likes of Mac Jones, Ryan Tannehill and Derek Carr. Of those three players, only Jones can say he’s thrown the same number of touchdowns as Purdy (5) and boast playing for even a top-20 offense according to DVOA. Purdy is also behind a retired Tom Brady (11th) and an injured Kyler Murray (12th), who hasn’t played since December and doesn’t have a definitive timetable for his return.

This list is based on six attributes that The Ringer writer Steven Ruiz — who had Purdy as the worst quarterback of last season’s playoff teams — grades every quarterback on, all weighted differently. Accuracy and decision-making each count for 25%; arm talent counts for 20%; and creativity, pocket presence and timing each count for 10%. 

Ruiz has Purdy’s creativity as the quarterback’s “biggest strength,” noting that the Niners player is “always hunting the big play.” Of the 34 (yes, 34) quarterbacks on the list, that’s good for 18th overall. Purdy’s best grade is in timing at 80 out of 100, which is good for 19th overall. The player’s “biggest weakness” is his pocket presence because he’s not tall enough.

“Some of that creativity comes at a cost,” Ruiz writes. “Purdy routinely drops his eyes and misses receivers running open downfield. That’s fairly common for shorter quarterbacks.”

It’s worth noting that on the same card as these low grades and criticisms are three stats: expected points added per play, passing success rate and completion percentage over expected. In those three categories, Purdy ranks first, first and fifth, respectively. Also, Ruiz’s own colleague at The Ringer starts off the blurb under the Niners’ No. 1 Power Rankings card with “Second-year quarterback Brock Purdy is already shutting up the haters by picking up right where he left off: Coloring Kyle Shanahan’s paint-by-number offense like a two-eared Van Gogh.”

Apparently, those haters don’t include Ruiz. This isn’t the writer’s first foray into heavy Purdy criticism. It’s a trend that dates back to last season. Before the start of the playoffs, the Niners quarterback was listed as No. 33 out of a possible 43 and last among the quarterbacks who made the playoffs — never mind that he was in the NFL’s final four. Even earlier this season, he concluded that after three weeks, Purdy was more “mediocre talent” than “patient distributor,” which aren’t exactly the two most complimentary categories to fall into.

Outside of the advanced stats, Purdy is, at worst, in the top half of the league in every statistical category. He leads the NFL in ESPN’s total quarterback rating (84.6) and passer rating (115.1), and he is second in yards per pass attempt (9.1), third in completion percentage (72.3%), eighth in passing yards (1,019), and tied for 12th in passing touchdowns (5). He also hasn’t thrown an interception this season, which is tied for the best mark in that stat.

Purdy is not without his faults, and he does receive a lot of help from the person calling the plays and the players on the receiving end of his throws. However, even the best quarterbacks aren’t perfect, and not everyone automatically thrives in a Shanahan offense. Case in point, The Ringer’s top-ranked Patrick Mahomes had a pretty sloppy game Sunday, and the Niners gave up on Trey Lance less than 1.5 months ago. It’s also kind of egregious to think that he wasn’t as good as Jimmy Garoppolo, Desmond Ridder, Kenny Pickett or Baker Mayfield to start the season.

There is precedent for huge movement on this list. Seahawks quarterback Geno Smith went from 13th at the start of the season to eighth going into Week 5, and Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow has fallen from fourth in Week 2 all the way to 15th in Week 5. However, given how this list views Purdy and his skill set, it would take a world-record performance for that kind of shift to happen, and all the Niners quarterback would be rewarded with would be a spot as the 20th-best quarterback in the league.