In the NFL team’s scouting report, the most salient information of all categories was in the box listed for the final grade. It simply read two words in capital letters.
NO INTEREST
That was the report for an NFL team last spring while evaluating Iowa State quarterback Brock Purdy. In fairness, this NFL organization probably shouldn’t feel too bad about its rating. Purdy almost went undrafted in 2022 and remained in the draft through the last pick, No. 262 overall. But the former Iowa star is now just a game away from leading the San Francisco 49ers to the Super Bowl. This weekend, he will become only the fifth rookie quarterback to start a conference title game, and none of the previous four have been able to help his team make it to the Super Bowl.
Purdy’s rise from election to “Mr. Irrelevant” was one of the most notable stories of the NFL season. The Athletic reviewed an NFL team’s preliminary scouting report to find out why the four-year-old college-starting quarterback lasted so long in the draft, then spoke to the coach who wrote that report and asked about competitive concerns on the condition of Anonymity on what he sees in Purdy now, what other teams may have missed and why the 23-year-old is such an ideal fit for the 49ers.
Last spring’s Purdy book was a less-than-ideally sized prospectus at 6.0 1/2 and 212 pounds. His hand size isn’t ideal either: 9 1/4 inches. The athleticism he displayed at the 2022 NFL Scouting Combine also failed to impress. He ran 4.84 40 and jumped 27 inches vertically. In his report, the coach wrote: “Not tested well, limited athlete who has a stretched body. Very mature and experienced. throw it ok.”
Purdy’s strengths were that he was “VERY” experienced with 48 college starts and that he manages the game well and is consistent in the routine games. He was creative as the play expanded and “worked through his progressions very well.”
The weaknesses: “sawed off…not a very good athlete…limited arm, both in strength and throwing repertoire.”
Purdy needed a series of injuries to get his chance in San Francisco this season. In Week 2, the 49ers lost starter Trey Lance to a broken ankle. Then, in early December, Jimmy Garoppolo injured his foot and San Francisco turned to Purdy. He was great, posting a 13-to-4 TD-INT ratio while completing 67 percent of his passes with a 107.3 rating, which is nearly two points higher than any tried-enough QB in the NFL to qualify. Even more impressively, Purdy is now 7-0 as the 49ers’ starting quarterback.
The NFL coach who wrote the scouting report said Monday, “The biggest thing that’s different from his college movie, and (49ers GM) John Lynch actually said it a few weeks ago, is his athleticism. I don’t remember him moving like that at Iowa State and he didn’t test well. He jumped 27 inches, which is awful. He ran a 4.85 (4.84). He has short arms, really short, and he has small hands. He’s 6-1 and his arm is fine. The twitch just wasn’t really there. His short shuttle was fine – 4.45 – not great.
“It feels like every year there’s two or three of these guys who played a lot in college. They produced the script and know it inside out, but they’re only physically limited. They play so much and you get a really good sense of what they can’t do, where sometimes it helps people who don’t play that much because their warts don’t show up that often.”
College quarterback grading has always been a particularly annoying thing for the NFL. One school of thought, the coach said, is if you want to win a QB in the first round, they have to be elite at one thing. “That was the whole debate with Mac Jones,” he said. “What’s his only thing he’s really great at? Well, it’s very well made and it’s really accurate, which is physically difficult to see. That was one thing with Joe Burrow (when he came out of LSU) until everyone turned on him. Joe is fast, but not really fast. His arm is good, not great. But it was, Hey, he’s just a baller. The guy’s really, really good at quarterback. When it comes to that ‘it factor’, it just bubbles out of him.”
Purdy was an effective runner at Iowa State, rushing for 19 touchdowns and nearly 1,200 yards in his career, but there was great concern about how well his wheels would translate at the next level. “The requirement to juke people and outrun others in college is a lot less than it is in the NFL,” the NFL coach said. “You saw that with Zach Wilson, Johnny Manziel and Tim Tebow – guys who looked fast in college but just aren’t fast enough in the NFL. In college, they might be able to pass that D-end or break away from that linebacker, but they were chopped down in the NFL. But Purdy somehow maintained that, nearly exceeding his level of agility in the NFL. I wonder what he did in the offseason (to prepare for the NFL).”
Purdy ran a 4.84 40-yard dash at the 2022 combine. (Kirby Lee / USA Today)
The coach said Purdy’s Iowa State offense has plenty of runs, Q-reads and RPOs, but there weren’t many true drop-back passings like what scouts saw from Burrow or Jones. Specifically, in the 49ers’ games against Tampa Bay, Washington, and Seattle, the coach said Purdy displayed some wobble, lateral quickness, and agility he hadn’t seen before making it to the NFL. The Cowboys, who are very athletic on defense, made Purdy the best the NFL has ever seen, he said.
“But,” the coach said, “what I think makes him really successful is that he processes a lot of pre-snap information because they’re making a lot of moves, shifts, kills and alerts on this offense. Just snapping the ball and knowing how to pass the ball can be difficult. His composure late down – he didn’t make many stupid mistakes – was really impressive. He had one (Sunday) when he threw the ball away and almost finished the half and you could see Kyle (Shanahan) MF-ing him under the call log for a good 10 seconds. Those pieces didn’t come up very often.”
When asked where he thinks Purdy would be drafted now based on what he’s shown this year, the coach said likely second or third round.
“We underestimated his agility and probably the mental side and San Francisco is perfect for that because they put a lot of emphasis on that because of their offense,” he said. “In San Francisco he can run and play action, boot, screen and manage the game. It’s not like he’s playing on a system like Buffalo, where the Bills are relying on Josh Allen to sit back and just throw the ball all over the field, where it’s like, ‘Good God, how are you making those throws ?’”
“In San Francisco, they don’t rely on quarterback performance as much as most teams do. It also helps that they have the best left tackle, one of the best tight ends, one of the best running backs, one of the best wide receivers and really good defense – they’re loaded around him.
The coach is excited to see how Purdy will handle the Eagles in the NFC Championship. “Philly does a lot to challenge you one-on-one where he has to make some tough throws — it’s a lot of five-man rushing, a lot of read-trap coverage — that can give the quarterback a tough time. It’ll be interesting to see how they attack it, especially when they can’t wield it the way they want to.”
(Top Photo: Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images)