Getty The 49ers could find another backup for Brock Purdy in the draft.
Steve Young knows a thing or two about keeping plays alive with his legs. The Hall of Fame quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers recently offered advice to 49ers QB Brock Purdy based on his experiences.
“I think that he needs to think about spitting out 50, 60 yards a game with his legs,” Young said on July 21 episode of the “49ers Talk” podcast. “And you don’t have to necessarily do it every time, but defenses need to know, ‘Oh, in a key moment, he just got the first down’ because it’s wide open. Go take it.
‘Patrick Mahomes does a great job. Josh Allen, you see that all the time. Lamar Jackson, you see it. Look, Brock knows he’s not that guy, but he can be a threat, and I think that threat needs to come out more this year.”
Young acknowledged that Purdy’s skills as a runner don’t match those of Mahomes, Allen and Jackson but suggested that he needed to be willing to carry the ball more often to force defenses to account for the possibility of him running.
Can Brock Purdy Be That Kind of Player?
Even with Purdy’s propensity to not run the ball, the 49ers have been highly successful, making it to the NFC Conference Championship in 2021 and 2022 and getting to the Super Bowl in 2023. Their offense in those three seasons looked like this:
Total Yards
2021: 7th (6,387)
2022: 5th (6,216)
2023: 2nd (6,773)
Total Points
2021: 13th (427)
2022: 6th (450)
2023: 3rd (491)
Third Down Conversion %
2021: 40.2%
2022: 45.0%
2023: 47.5%
The adjustment from Jimmy Garoppolo in 2021 and the majority of 2022 to Purdy in the late stages of 2022 to 2023 has been flawless. The team has improved on offense, moving the ball well and extending drives when they’ve needed to.
In 2023, Purdy ran 39 times for 144 yards (108 of which came before contact), resulting in 15 first downs. Although the sample size is small, the numbers are encouraging to 49ers fans. He’s not likely to bash his way through defenders like Allen and he probably won’t bust off a 40- or 50-yard TD run like Jackson, but he’s been nearly as effective. It’s a noisy stat, but Purdy’s 53.8% rushing success rate barely trails Jackson’s 54.1% while leads Mahomes’ 50.7% and lags well behind Allen’s 65.8%.
There’s no guarantee that an increase in attempts will result in Purdy’s maintaining his respectable success rate, but Young’s perspective suggests it’s worth a try.
Why Mess With a Good Thing?
The 49ers made it to the cusp of a Super Bowl championship last season, and have shown marked improvement on offense in each of the last three seasons, so why add new wrinkles if they don’t need to?
A look at how the 49ers’ season ended could illustrate why. In the fourth quarter of Super Bowl, the 49ers had two different 3-point leads that they couldn’t hold onto. Most notably, the 49ers had a 1st and 10 at the Kansas City Chiefs‘ 40-yard-line with 3:27 to go. Here’s what happened:
1st and 10 – Christian McCaffery run for 5 yards
2nd and 5 — Completed pass for 0 yards
3rd and 5 — Incomplete pass
4th and 5 — 53-yard FG
The 49ers needed a first down, badly, to use more clock and give themselves a chance to win. If there was ever a time they needed a more mobile QB to spread things out and use his legs, it was then. They couldn’t get a single yard after first down and ended up watching Mahomes work his magic down the field. Mahomes scrambled for positive yardage twice on the drive.
The final offensive drive of the season saw almost exactly the same result. A 6-yard McCaffery run on first, followed by no gain, and incomplete pass and having to settle for a FG. The Chiefs would march down the field, highlighted by an 8-yard scamper by Mahomes on 4th-and-1, and another 19-yard run on 3rd-and-1 before the game-winning touchdown.
The 49ers don’t need to reinvent the wheel, but that little bit of a threat from Purdy could have made all the difference when it mattered most.