The 49ers Need To Use Play Action More Frequently

The 49ers aren't playing to Brock Purdy's strengths this season.

Oct 6, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy (13) looks to hand off the ball to running back Jordan Mason (24) during the first quarter against the Arizona Cardinals at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kelley L Cox-Imagn Images / Kelley L Cox-Imagn Images

SANTA CLARA -- The 49ers aren't playing to Brock Purdy's strengths this season.

He's an elite play-action passer. He can turn his back to the defense, fake a handoff, spin his head back around and find open receivers incredibly quickly. Plus he can throw while rolling to his right or his left.

That's why Purdy's play-action passer rating this season is 133.9 and his play-action completion percentage is 81.8.

Meanwhile, Purdy's drop-back passer rating is just 88 and his drop-back completion percentage is 63. Clearly, the 49ers need to call more play-action passes. But they're calling fewer this season than ever before.

On Tuesday, Purdy was asked about this troubling trend. Here's what he said courtesy of the 49ers' p.r. department.

Your play-action is down this year from what's been in the past. Is that a function of that when teams are dropping more, you don't want to turn your back because you need that extra time to go through progressions? What do you kind of attribute that to?

“I don't know if that's the case. I would say, you’ve got to be running the ball really, really well and then setting up certain plays and stuff. Where we're at, I think we're running the ball really well. But I think within schemes and trying to win with certain plays drawn up, for us it's just been drop-back plays. We trust in the guys to just be able to drop back and allow me to go through a progression and rip it to them. We're not going into a game saying they're going to drop back a lot so we're going to stay away from the play-action pass. We still have plays dialed up in the play-action world, but we just haven't had opportunities to run them in the right situations or whatnot. But again, we're trusting in [head coach] Kyle [Shanahan] within all the play calls with that regard. And so, that's just sort of just how the flow of the game has gone and the play calls have gone.”

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