49ers QB Brock Purdy is Alarmingly Bad at the End of Close Games

Brock Purdy will enter his fourth season this year and we're starting to learn exactly who he is.
Dec 30, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy (13) during the game against the Detroit Lions at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Sergio Estrada-Imagn Images
Dec 30, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy (13) during the game against the Detroit Lions at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Sergio Estrada-Imagn Images / Sergio Estrada-Imagn Images
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Brock Purdy will enter his fourth season this year and we're starting to learn exactly who he is.

In the first half of games, he's great. He has thrown 35 touchdown passes and just 8 interceptions and his career passer rating before halftime is 106.9. Only Lamar Jackson has a higher passer rating in the first half since Purdy entered the league, and Jackson is a future Hall of Famer.

But Hall of Fame quarterbacks and Super Bowl champions build their reputations in the fourth quarter of close, one-score games when the pressure and the stakes are at their highest. That's when Joe Montana became Joe Montana.

In those situations, Purdy has thrown 4 touchdown passes, 7 interceptions and his passer rating is a mere 70.9 according to ESPN. He never has thrown a game-winning touchdown pass at the end of regulation, but he has thrown plenty of game-losing interceptions.

If Purdy can't put a team away in the third quarter, he becomes a liability in the fourth. His late-game interceptions were the biggest reason the 49ers missed the playoffs this season -- not Jake Moody's missed field goals. Purdy's turnovers were far more disastrous.

Franchise quarterbacks who make more than $50 million per season are supposed to play their best in crunch time -- that's what they're paid to do. But that's when Purdy plays his worst.

Compare him to Jimmy Garoppolo. When Garoppolo was the 49ers starting quarterback from 2017 to 2022, his passer rating in the fourth quarter of close games was 104 according to ESPN. For all of his flaws, he was mentally tough. As opposed to Purdy, who melts down.

Maybe Purdy will improve his mental toughness as he gets older, or maybe he simply isn't clutch. We'll find out.

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Grant Cohn
GRANT COHN

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.