NFL World Slams Brock Purdy Over Preseason Struggle Without Key Starters

Dubbed “Mr. Irrelevant,” Brock Purdy defied all expectations last year by leading the San Francisco 49ers to the Super Bowl in his second season as a starter. Despite the QB’s achievements, many pundits and fans have repeatedly downplayed his success, attributing it to the Kyle Shanahan system. In fact, these criticisms have resurfaced following Purdy’s preseason stinker.

Yesterday saw the 49ers take on the Saints in their second preseason game. Despite winning the bout with a final score of 16-10, a notable highlight from the matchup was Purdy’s dismal performance.

Most tellingly, the QB’s poor performance — 2 completions out of 6 attempts and just 11 total yards — came with no starters to support him. This unsurprisingly led to naysayers flocking to social media to troll the QB, who, in their eyes, can never thrive without his star targets: Deebo Samuel, George Kittle, and Christian McCaffrey.

There were also typical insults suggesting that if Purdy weren’t fortunate enough to play under Kyle Shanahan’s system, he’d be a free agent by now. The labels of “overrated” and “not HIM” followed closely behind.

The slew of remarks above had one theme in common — Purdy is nothing without the star-studded team around him. He doesn’t have the magic like Mahomes and Burrow to make plays on his own.

On the flip side, though, a section of 49ers fans haplessly rushed to the QB’s rescue as they found the criticism too harsh and illogical.

“Was throwing to 4th string WRs…”: netizens defend Purdy’s horror show against Saints

While stats don’t lie, they don’t tell the whole story either. A deeper look at the game reveals that the 49ers were basically playing with fringe bench warmers like Jacob Cowing, and Tay Martin, among others.

Moreover, with three starting offensive linemen absent, their O-line was virtually non-existent. On top of that, the QB received no support in the rushing game. Given this context, fans urged critics to cut Purdy some slack.

As per HC Shanahan, Purdy was asked to start so that he could have a couple of reps and drive-ins under his belt before the regular season. Unfortunately, Kyle admitted that things didn’t go according to plan for Brock.

Regardless, he expressed no concern over his QB1’s performance, as the primary goal of the game was simply to get Purdy to face some opponents:

“Just thought that it’d be good for him to get a couple reps in or a couple drives in. We were hoping it would be one long drive just to get him out, similar to what BA had last week… I think it’s good for quarterbacks to get in.”

That said, this outburst by netizens is arguably pointless. As Kyle rightly pointed out, preseason games are to get the players back in the groove.

Given the lengthy layoff from action, a few poor performances should be considered normal and not cause for alarm. After all, as long as Purdy helps the 49ers win games, the debate about his abilities is largely moot.