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How Deebo Samuel's Absence Will Affect 49ers QB Brock Purdy

Purdy has thrown 16 inteceptions as a starting quarterback, and 43.8 percent of them occured when Samuel was injured. This stat does not bode well for this Sunday.

Grant Cohn

Nov 23, 2023; Seattle, Washington, USA; San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Deebo Samuel (19) eats a turkey leg as he and quarterback Brock Purdy (13) jog to the locker room following a 31-13 victory against the Seattle Seahawks at Lumen Field. Mandatory Credit: Joe Nicholson-Imagn Images
Nov 23, 2023; Seattle, Washington, USA; San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Deebo Samuel (19) eats a turkey leg as he and quarterback Brock Purdy (13) jog to the locker room following a 31-13 victory against the Seattle Seahawks at Lumen Field. Mandatory Credit: Joe Nicholson-Imagn Images / Joe Nicholson-Imagn Images
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Brock Purdy plays much better with Deebo Samuel than without him. That's a fact.

This Sunday, Purdy and the 49ers will have to face the Rams without Samuel, who will miss at least the next two games with a calf injury. Samuel is an excellent player who makes everyone around him better, particularly Purdy.

Purdy stil is relatively inexperienced -- he has started just 29 games in his career counting the playoffs. In 23 games with Deebo Samuel, Purdy has thrown just 9 picks, or one every two and a half games. That's very good. But in the six games in which Purdy has played most or all of the time without Samuel, he has thrown seven interceptions. That's roughly one per game. That's not very good.

Purdy has thrown 16 inteceptions as a starting quarterback, and 43.8 percent of them occured when Samuel was injured. This stat does not bode well for this Sunday.

The Rams currently have the worst defense in the NFL -- no team has given up more yards than they have threw two games. But the 49ers won't have Samuel or Christian McCaffrey -- they're both out. George Kittle likely won't play, either. Which means Purdy won't have his YAC receivers. He'll have to push the ball downfield, which means he might have to take some risks.

If the 49ers eventually make Purdy one of the highest-paid players in the NFL, he'll have to play lots of games without Samuel, McCaffrey and Kittle -- they'll be too expensive to keep around. This Sunday will be a sneak preview of the 49ers' future.

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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.

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