Instead of belaboring the obvious, that the San Francisco 49ers are struggling because they are disproportionately dependent on a handful of special veteran skill-position players who also tend to accumulate frequent traveler miles on the injury report, let’s focus on something we have missed about this team’s yearly trip into the abyss that causes us to wonder whether the run is over. (Hint: it’s not!)
Brock Purdy has been playing well over a stretch of time in which he hasn’t had the ultimate quarterback security blanket in Christian McCaffrey. In Week 3, he was also without George Kittle, whose presence is both a physical and mathematical game-changer on every down, that allows the 49ers to play against defenses of their choosing. And, after Kyle Shanahan played Purdy during meaningless snaps this offseason, also without his best skill-position players, minus his starting offensive line and without Shanahan calling the plays, it was clear he wanted to see how a quarterback in line to receive $60 million a year would play during the lean years when McCaffrey, Kittle, Deebo Samuel, Kyle Juszczyk and Trent Willliams have phased out of the picture.
The answer Sunday against the Los Angeles Rams—with a limited cast and a version of Brandon Aiyuk that is nowhere near up to speed after an offseason holdout—was 292 passing yards and three touchdowns in a 27–24 loss. On the season, Purdy has just one interception and one game with a completion percentage under 70. Against the Rams, six of his eight incompletions were drops. He would have had a completion percentage above 90 otherwise. Purdy came into this week second in completion percentage over expectation (CPOE) and was fourth this week behind only Justin Fields, Jalen Hurts and Aaron Rodgers. He came into this week fourth in down-by-down success rate and seventh in total EPA…