Hashtag MVPurdy

The supposed competition

Look at the names next to Purdy’s. It’s Josh Allen, and it’s Kenneth Walker, and neither case survives contact with the actual definition of the word valuable.

Allen is a great player having a mortal month. Thirteen total touchdowns and a 100.1 rating is a fine season. It just isn’t this season. Defenses have adjusted to him, the Bills have looked human, and the gap between Allen’s play and Purdy’s play right now is the gap between very good and historic.

Walker’s case is more interesting and more wrong. He leads the league in rushing for Kansas City, which is exactly the problem with giving a running back the award. Plug a good back in behind Patrick Mahomes and Andy Reid and the machine hums. If Walker went down tomorrow, the Chiefs would cobble together a running game and keep marching toward the AFC Championship. Running back is the closest thing this league has to a plug-and-play position. Talk to me if Kenneth Walker breaks the single season rushing record or gets a thousand/thousand season. Then we can see how his value compares with Brock. Right now, it ain’t close.

Now run the same test on Purdy. If he went down, the 49ers’ season changes shape entirely. That’s what valuable means. Not the best stats on the best team. The player whose absence would break everything.

The “holy-💩” stat

Per ESPN, only two quarterbacks in NFL history have opened a season with 10-plus total touchdowns and zero sacks taken through the first three weeks: Dan Marino in 1984, and Brock Purdy.

Marino won the MVP that year. He threw for 5,084 yards and 48 touchdowns, both records at the time, and dragged the Dolphins to the Super Bowl.

And here is the part that makes it poetry: Marino was Purdy’s childhood idol. Purdy wears number 13 because of Dan Marino. His father, a Dolphins fan, raised him on Marino highlights and had him studying the quick release as a kid. In 2023, Ryan Fitzpatrick FaceTimed Marino during a Purdy interview, and the most composed young quarterback in football turned into a starstruck fan in real time. “I wear 13 and everything because of you, man.”

So the only man standing next to Purdy in this particular slice of history is the man who was on his childhood bedroom wall. You cannot make this up.

How he’s doing it

The raw line through four games: 79 of 113, 69.9 percent (a career high), 1,007 yards, 11 touchdowns, one interception, a 126.2 passer rating that leads the NFL. Four straight games over 100, the only quarterback who can say that. He’s on pace for 4,280 yards, which would match his own franchise record from 2023. (49ers Webzone)

Four straight games over 100. The only quarterback who can say that.

Purdy and Mahomes are the only QBs in the top 10 whose teams are unbeaten.

QB	Rtg	Comp%	TD	INT	Rush yds
Brock Purdy (SF)	126.2	69.9	11	1	122
Lamar Jackson (BAL)	119.6	70.8	6	1	–
Trevor Lawrence (JAX)	111.2	69.2	8	2	34
Jared Goff (DET)	108.6	67.7	9	0	–
Patrick Mahomes (KC)	106.2	64.1	9	2	41
Dak Prescott (DAL)	105.0	70.0	8	1	66
Josh Allen (BUF)	100.1	66.4	6	3	118
Bryce Young (CAR)	100.0	62.3	9	2	–
Kirk Cousins (LV)	99.5	64.6	11	4	–
Joe Burrow (CIN)	99.5	71.3	7	3	–

The zero sacks deserves its own paragraph. Purdy is the only starting quarterback in the league who hasn’t been taken down. Some of that is the offensive line. A lot of it is him. Watch the games and you’ll count the plays where he should have gone down and didn’t, because his 10-yard split sits in the 89th percentile among quarterbacks. For the first 10 yards, he is quicker than almost everyone who plays his position. That quickness buys an extra beat. That beat gets receivers open.

He also knows the other half of the skill, which is when not to use it. He knows when to tuck it and run for the first down and when to throw it away and live for the next play. That judgment is what makes him so hard to defend. Coverage can only hold up so long, and Purdy keeps extending the question past the point where the answer is comfortable. (MockDraftable, 89th percentile 10-yard split vs. QBs.)

This isn’t just the traditional numbers, either. He leads the league in EPA per dropback and adjusted net yards per attempt. The 49ers’ passing offense is producing the third-best DVOA through four games of any team since 1977. That’s not a hot start. That’s historic company. (Niners Wire)

Wk	Opp	Cmp/Att	Yds	TD	INT	Rtg
1	@ LAR	25/34	205	3	1	105.6
2	vs MIA	20/22	287	2	0	149.1
3	vs ARI	15/27	297	4	0	133.8
4	vs DEN	19/30	218	2	0	107.4

The MASH unit

He’s doing all of this throwing to a MASH unitEaster egg🎺 Suicide Is Painless plays softly in your head..

Four wide receivers on injured reserve: Demarcus Robinson, Christian Kirk, De’Zhaun Stribling, Ricky Pearsall. Mike Evans suiting up and producing through a rib injury. Kyle Juszczyk, the offense’s Swiss Army knife, shelved with a knee. The healthy receiver room right now is Deebo Samuel, Brandin Cooks, Jacob Cowing, and Jordan Watkins.

Here’s the test I keep coming back to. Put Mac Jones back there with this group and tell me the offense looks like this. It doesn’t. It isn’t close.

And this isn’t new. The 49ers are always injured. Purdy has spent his entire professional career producing with whoever is left standing. At some point “he does it with no help” stops being a caveat and starts being the argument.

The record

In a matter of weeks, Purdy will qualify for the career passer rating leaderboard. He needs 34 more attempts to reach 1,500. When he gets there, his 105.7 will sit atop the all-time list, ahead of Aaron Rodgers and everyone else. (New York Post)

Read that again. The last pick of the draft is about to own the most efficient passing career in NFL history. The system-quarterback crowd has officially run out of roadThe receiptsCam Newton: “game manager, not a game changer”Skip Bayless: “I do not believe in Brock Purdy”Bayless, 2023: the “system quarterback” crowd. You can say it’s Shanahan, you can say it’s the scheme, but schemes don’t lead the league in passer rating while throwing to their fourth-string receivers. Players do.

(George Kittle, by the way, is playing like the Comeback Player of the Year. That’s a separate column. It’s coming.)

The record tells you where he’s been. The comps tell you where he’s going. Quarterback comparisons are usually lazy. These two aren’t. Fran Tarkenton was the undersized improviser the 1961 draft never saw coming. Drew Brees was the too-short precision passer the league got wrong at pick 32. Purdy is heir to both, and the numbers make the case with the caveats printed right on the graphics.

Open the comps: Tarkenton and Brees, with receipts

The Tarkenton comp is the feet as much as the arm. Fran Tarkenton was 6-foot-nothing, a third-round pick nobody built a scheme around, and he made a Hall of Fame career out of the exact thing Purdy does best: the play isn’t dead until he says it’s dead. The raw numbers don’t translate across eras, and the graphic says so honestly, but the shape of it does. Undersized. Overlooked. Unkillable in the pocket. Tarkenton won an MVP the same way Purdy is chasing one.

The Brees comp is the accuracy and the doubt. Brees fell to 32nd overall because he was too short. Purdy fell to 262nd because everyone agreed he was too * something. * Both win with timing and anticipation instead of arm strength. Where it breaks: Brees was a pure pocket passer with 366 rushing yards in his first five seasons, and Purdy already has 749. Brees needed a change of scenery in New Orleans to become BREES. Purdy was elite from his first start.

The bottom line

Seattle on Sunday is the test everyone wants, at Lumen Field, against the defending champs. Fine. Bring it.

But the MVP case doesn’t need Sunday. It’s already on the page. The rating, the touchdowns, the zero sacks, the MASH unit, the history with Marino, the all-time record waiting 34 attempts away. Hashtag MVPurdy isn’t a campaign. It’s a description. Fingers crossed Brock keeps it up for the whole season!