San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy threw for a regular-season career-high 310 yards in Thursday night’s 30-12 win over the New York Giants.
Despite facing manic blitzes from Wink Martindale’s defense, Purdy finished 25-of-37 passing with two touchdowns for a 111.3 passer rating. Despite the numbers, it wasn’t exactly a pretty game for the second-year quarterback. He missed a host of throws, particularly early in the contest, and never looked comfortable.
It was surprising that he set a regular-season career high (332 in Wild Card Round), given the passes he missed.
“It definitely wasn’t his best game, but I think Brock played well, definitely wasn’t perfect, missed a couple throws, but he also made a couple plays that I didn’t think were there,” 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan said. “So I was definitely happy with him.”
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The Giants blitzed Purdy on 33 of his 39 dropbacks, per Next Gen Stats — the 84.6 percent is the highest in the NGS era. With Martindale getting his “teenager-playing-Madden tilt” on, Purdy quickly got rid of the ball, averaging the fastest time to throw of his career (2.34 seconds).
Purdy finished 20-of-31 for 247 yards, two TDs and two sacks versus the blitz. Not too shabby, considering he was often forced to throw off one foot.
Shanahan noted that facing a defensive coordinator like Martindale, especially on a short week, is a tall task for any quarterback.
“Yeah, he missed a couple today and guys made a couple of real good catches also,” he said of Purdy. “I thought it was just a huge challenge. One of the biggest ones Brock’s been in just the short week to prepare for a scheme like that. Just how much they do, they had six guys on the line of scrimmage throughout the game, half the time they’re coming, half the time they’re not. There’s not a comfortable play throughout a game from a play call standpoint and from the quarterback just because there’s a lot of plays that don’t work versus that. So, you got to constantly be looking at it and sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t, which is a huge challenge for a quarterback. I thought he settled down throughout it as the game went and ended up playing good enough for us to win.”
It helps to have playmakers like Deebo Samuel, George Kittle and Christian McCaffrey, who can take short dump-offs to long gains. The 49ers generated 215 of their 310 passing yards after the catch Thursday night.
After the win, Purdy was more focused on the plays he missed than the ones he made.
“I don’t really get wrapped up in the stats and stuff,” he said. “There’s some throws out there that I missed that could’ve obviously helped us get the lead earlier, quicker and faster. Those are the things that sort of are in my mouth that I have a bad taste from that I want to be better at. So watch the film, keep getting better and we just want to keep winning.”
For the third straight week, the Niners put up exactly 30 points in a win. They became the third team in NFL history to start 3-0 with the same number of points scored in each game, per NFL Research, joining the 1936 Pittsburgh Pirates and the 2007 New England Patriots.
“That’s why we tried to struggle in the red zone so we could keep 30 three weeks in a row,” Shanahan joked Thursday of the anomaly. “I didn’t even realize that until after, but I mean, it’s great to get 30 three weeks in a row but we felt like we left a lot out there too.”
Through three weeks, the Niners look the part of a looming NFC monster, running away with wins despite being just a tad off. If they tweak those issues and are healthy come January, look out.
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