Week 15 Dynasty Fantasy Football Stock Watch: Brock Purdy, Dameon Pierce

The Brock Purdy hype train rolls on and a buying opportunity for a rookie running back.

In last week's Dynasty Stock Watch, I discussed Brock Purdy. After his thrilling Week 14 performance against Tom Brady and the Buccaneers, here we are again with more Purdy talk.

No long intro this week so let's just get straight to the stock watch...

QB Brock Purdy, San Francisco 49ers
I remain supremely and cautiously optimistic about his future prospects. Would I love to have Purdy stashed as my third QB in 1QB leagues or fourth QB in superflex leagues? Yes. Do I believe Purdy has a promising future? Kinda. Am I buying him? Probably not. 

I coined the phrase “Tom Brady Exception” to classify Purdy—and Mike White, while we’re on the subject. Meaning, I will only believe either player will eclipse their incumbent—Trey Lance and Zach Wilson, respectively—if they win a Super Bowl this year. That’s what Brady did in 2001 after taking over for Drew Bledsoe. Now Brady won the starting job outright with his incredible play during the regular season, plus he got an early start, playing at the end of the Patriots’ Week 2 game against the Jets. From there, he started in Week 3, so the Super Bowl was just the icing on the cake. The rest is history. We need something at that level or close to it for either Purdy or White to stake their starting claim outright. This isn’t to say neither player has a good chance to be the starter next year, it’s more that Lance and Wilson will get their fair shot to win back the starter role in the offseason and into training camp.

I like the way Purdy decisively throws with anticipation. I like his gung-ho attitude to tuck it and run. I like how he delivers the football while on the move. It looks like controlled chaos at times. There's a lot to like. But we have to remember a lot of this success falls back to Kyle Shanahan and the offensive staff who are throwing the kitchen sink at defenses every game to confuse them, put guys in motion, overload one side and so on. Purdy has pieces though and any player who surprises me and delivers the way he does, I'm excited for him. If I were a betting man, or maybe a more successful betting man, I believe Purdy will be the 49ers starter in 2023.  That said, we still haven't seen enough of Lance to dismiss him and the draft capital spent on him will give him every opportunity to win the job. So why am I betting on Purdy? Because he's shown me more in limited reps than Lance did with limited reps. The sample size is too small to be definitive.

Overall, not much about Purdy changes after one game besides a slight bump to his trade value cost and that I’m a teensy bit more willing to hold rather than sell. Beating Brady is a nice way to end your first career start though. I’d only want to sell to the manager who has Lance as we may be able to leverage his desire to handcuff into a higher price tag for Purdy.

Price check: 2023 3rd
Superflex: 2023 late 2nd
Win-now: Hold/Sell to Lance managers
Rebuild: Hold/Sell to Lance managers

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RB Dameon Pierce, Houston Texans
Even though Dameon Pierce has 939 rushing yards, 165 receiving yards and five touchdowns this year, his trade value remains suppressed. It doesn’t help that the Texans have basically nothing else on offense to help him out, but I tend to take a “can’t get much worse than how it is now” approach to players in his situation. I felt the same about Trevor Lawrence after last year’s Urban Meyer debacle. But to be fair, I felt that optimism too about Matt Ryan after his awful final year in Atlanta and the promise of strong offensive line and running back pairing with the Colts. Didn’t pan out that way, so you win some and you lose some. 

With all that promise Pierce has shown despite his team's failures, the former Florida running back is the RB16 on KeepTradeCut and the RB21 on FantasyCalc. I don't know what games other people are watching, but I don't get it. Najee Harris, another good back on a bad team, has about the same number of PPR points this year, and he's about five spots higher on FantasyCalc RB rankings despite being two years older. Harris isn't exactly the best comp, but let's frame it this way. Javonte Williams averages out to the RB14 between the two aforementioned sites and how awful is that Broncos' offense? About the same as Houston if you ask me. Maybe that means Williams is overvalued (it does, especially coming off injury), but the same can be said about Breece Hall. The injured Jets RB is the RB1(!) on KTC and RB4 on FantasyCalc. While he is a year younger than Pierce, Hall also has a potential split backfield to contend with if Zonovan Knight continues to play well. Point being that in most cases, the good never have it as good as we believe. And the bad don't have it as bad.

Am I banging down the door of the Pierce manager to snatch him up? That mostly depends on how Pierce is valued by his manager. At the end of the day, he’s still just the best player on paper on a very bad team. But it helps Pierce is now dinged up with a high-ankle sprain, so it’s possible the Texans shut him down for the remainder of that season. That may add another small dip in his trade value, in what I believe was already a pretty good buying opportunity.

Price check: 2023 late 1st
Win-now: Buy/Hold
Rebuild: Buy/Hold