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Will 49ers QB Brock Purdy Improve in 2024?

Has the league caught up to Purdy, or will he take another leap forward this year?

Grant Cohn

January 20, 2024; Santa Clara, CA, USA; San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy (13) during the fourth quarter in a 2024 NFC divisional round game against the Green Bay Packers at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports
January 20, 2024; Santa Clara, CA, USA; San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy (13) during the fourth quarter in a 2024 NFC divisional round game against the Green Bay Packers at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports / Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports
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Brock Purdy might improve this season, but from a statistical standpoint he will have an incredibly difficult time trying to top what he did in 2023.

Technically, he was the highest-rated quarterback in the NFL, the highest-rated quarterback in franchise history and the 14th-highest-rated quarterback of all time for a single season. He also led the league in touchdown percentage, yards per pass attempt and yards per completion. With numbers like those, it's incredible he didn't win the MVP award.

In the playoffs, defenses adjusted their game plans to attack Purdy's weaknesses and began playing much more man-to-man coverage. And in three postseason games, Purdy's passer rating was 88.3, which is decidedly mediocre.

So has the league caught up to Purdy, or will he take another leap forward this year?

I'm saying Purdy will improve. He knows he'll face more man-to-man coverage this season and he'll be more prepared to beat it. He'll have the entire offseason to prepare as opposed to last year when he had to skip OTAs and minicamp and parts of training camp as he was recovering from a UCL tear in his throwing elbow.

According to Purdy, he didn't feel fully recovered until midway through the season. And he still had an MVP-caliber year. Now his elbow isn't an issue anymore and he hasn't missed a practice all offseason. Which means even if his numbers aren't as good as last year, we should see the best version of Purdy this year. And that's good news for the 49ers.

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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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