How Brock Purdy Can Improve

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Brock Purdy already has established himself as a Pro Bowl quarterback just two seasons into his career, and he still can improve, although maybe not as a passer.
If anything, Purdy could regress a bit as a passer, or his statistics could. Because frankly it would be hard for them to get much better than they've been the past two seasons. He led the NFL in passer rating and yards per pass attempt in 2023.
But Purdy also threw lots of passes that nearly got intercepted by opposing defenses but were dropped. Which means he has been exceptionally good AND exceptionally lucky. Eventually, his luck will even out, and defenses most likely will hold onto the interceptions he serves up. Remember -- he's a gunslinger, not a game manager. He likes to take risks. It's part of who he is as a quarterback.
But even if Purdy throws more interceptions next season, he still could improve his overall game.
Purdy is an exceptional scrambler who doesn't scramble nearly enough. He could be so much more dangerous if he would stop trying to be Joe Montana and embrace his inner Steve Young.
One of the only reasons the 49ers survived the NFC Championship Game against the Lions was because Purdy scrambled five times for 48 yards. Then in the Super Bowl, he scrambled only three times for 12 yards while Mahomes ran nine times for 66 yards, and that was a big difference in the outcome of the game.
During the playoffs, Purdy averaged 5.3 yards per carry, which shows how dangerous he can be with his legs if he uses them. During the regular season, he ran only 2.4 times per game. He should double that in 2024.
Use your legs, Brock.

Grant Cohn has covered the San Francisco 49ers daily since 2011. He spent the first nine years of his career with the Santa Rosa Press Democrat where he wrote the Inside the 49ers blog and covered famous coaches and athletes such as Jim Harbaugh, Colin Kaepernick and Patrick Willis. In 2012, Inside the 49ers won Sports Blog of the Year from the Peninsula Press Club. In 2020, Cohn joined FanNation and began writing All49ers. In addition, he created a YouTube channel which has become the go-to place on YouTube to consume 49ers content. Cohn's channel typically generates roughly 3.5 million viewers per month, while the 49ers' official YouTube channel generates roughly 1.5 million viewers per month. Cohn live streams almost every day and posts videos hourly during the football season. Cohn is committed to asking the questions that 49ers fans want answered, and providing the most honest and interactive coverage in the country. His loyalty is to the reader and the viewer, not the team or any player or coach. Cohn is a new-age multimedia journalist with an old-school mentality, because his father is Lowell Cohn, the legendary sports columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle from 1979 to 1993. The two have a live podcast every Tuesday. Grant Cohn grew up in Oakland and studied English Literature at UCLA from 2006 to 2010. He currently lives in Oakland with his wife.
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