How Brock Purdy Holds Back the 49ers Wide Receivers

Alex Smith was similar -- a smart quarterback who didn't take full advantage of his wide receivers because he was more comfortable throwing short, safe passes to backs and tight ends.

Grant Cohn | Nov 10, 2023

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San Francisco 49ers

Brandon Aiyuk is on pace for more than 1,300 receiving yards this season, but he has caught just two touchdown passes while Deebo Samuel has caught only one. Are they to blame, or is it the quarterback, Brock Purdy?

Purdy has had a good start to his career, and now we're learning some tendencies and patterns about him. For starters, he tends not to throw to wide receivers in the red zone. This season, he has 12 touchdown passes, and 8 have gone to tight ends and running backs -- 4 to Christian McCaffrey, 3 to George Kittle and 1 to Kyle Juszczyk.

Alex Smith was similar -- a smart quarterback who didn't take full advantage of his wide receivers because he was more comfortable throwing short, safe passes to backs and tight ends.

Since Brock Purdy took over last season, Aiyuk has just four touchdown catches in 15 games, Samuel has 1 touchdown catch in 12 games and Jauan Jennings has 0 touchdown catches in 15 games. That's a trend. And the common denominator is Purdy.

That doesn't mean Purdy is a bad quarterback -- he's not bad. But he is limited. And he prefers throwing in the red zone to backs and tight ends, then why should the 49ers spend so much money on wide receivers? Is it wise to extend Brandon Aiyuk's contract this offseason and spend nearly $45 million per season on him and Samuel? Shouldn't the 49ers spend that money on offensive linemen instead if Purdy isn't going to fully utilize his wide receivers?

Or do the 49ers need a better quarterback?

That's what they have to find out the rest of this season.

Published Nov 10, 2023

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.