Sometimes a player lands in a perfect situation but at completely the wrong time. He could be thought ideally suited to run the offense he now finds himself a member of, but his draft status makes it unlikely he’ll ever get the chance to do so. But sometimes, the player gets the chance, for a host of reasons. Often, when this happens, the “ideal situation” is revealed to be far from ideal, with players like Cody Kessler and Duck Hodges showing nothing to suggest they should be long-term answers for their teams. But occasionally, a long shot can hit. And in a big way.

As I’m sure you’ve heard by now, Brock Purdy was the very last player taken in the 2022 NFL Draft. He was an early breakout player at Iowa State, passing for 2,250 yards in ten games as a freshman. He finished his college career with 12,180 passing yards and 81 touchdowns.  Purdy was taken to sit behind Trey Lance and Jimmy Garoppolo in 2023, giving him a chance to learn the offense and develop his skills. He was not supposed to be a significant driver for the team’s offensive success. But did things turn out that way? Purdy is the latest subject in the RotoViz Rookie Comparison series.

By The Numbers

Injuries to Lance and Garoppolo saw Purdy ascend to the starting role for the 49ers in Week 14, though he played most of the game against the Dolphins in Week 13. All told, he finished the season with 1,374 passing yards and 13 touchdowns, with just four interceptions.

In his six games with significant involvement, Purdy never attempted more than 37 passes in a single game. Indeed, he only had two games with 30 or more pass attempts. He completed a high 25 passes against the Dolphins, which was one of only two games with 20 or more completions. Purdy never had more than 284 passing yards in a game. He finished with between 178 and 234 in five of his six games. Yet while the attempts and yardage figures were low, Purdy did show a knack for throwing touchdowns. Purdy tossed two scoring passes in every game from Week 13 to Week 17. Then he ended the season with three in Week 18.

Random Factors

Purdy was greatly assisted by his playmakers, who excelled whenever Purdy got the ball into their hands. 49ers receivers averaged 4.54 yards after the catch per target for Purdy in 2022. He wasn’t able, nor expected, to put up gaudy passing stats in the 49ers’ offense. Kyle Shanahan wants to run the ball and wants to run as few offensive plays as possible. The 49ers’ overall pass rate in 2022 was 52%, rising all the way to 53% in neutral situations.^[1]Per the RotoViz Pace Tool. They were the second-slowest offense in the league, averaging 28.7 seconds per snap. The 49ers averaged the 13th-fewest plays per game. You can make a very strong case that Purdy did his job perfectly, as he facilitated the offense and kept it on track.

We have only a small sample size to look at, but how did Purdy fare in fantasy football after he entered the lineup?

Touchdowns fuelled Purdy’s fantasy production, with at least in every game from Week 13 onwards. From Week 13 to the end of the season, Purdy was the QB12. His low yardage totals as a passer didn’t help propel him to fantasy superstardom. Nor did his complete lack of rushing production. Purdy’s single-game high in rushing yards was seven, while he never ran more than four times in a game.

Historical Comps

In order to find players who enjoyed comparable seasons, I did what we’ve done in the past when carrying out this series. I set the RotoViz Screener to find rookies from 2010 to 2022 and selected some basic production and usage numbers as variables. Then I asked the Screener to find seasons comparable to my target player — in this instance, Purdy.^[2]Because Purdy played few regular season games, I’m including his playoff stats in the tables below.