Yahoo Sports’ Jason Fitz, senior NFL reporter Charles Robinson, and NFL writer Frank Schwab discuss how Purdy can prove doubters wrong by stepping up while his top offensive playmakers are out with injuries. Hear the full conversation on “Inside Coverage” – and subscribe on , , or
Video Transcript
We can talk all we want about, you know, oh, it’s unfair like people keep calling him a system quarterback and like it, well, the league’s not fair.
He got drafted last, OK, everybody passed him over repeatedly and then he comes in and has success and that continues.
People focus it through Shanahan.
It’s Shanahan, it’s the skill position players.
It’s Debo, it’s Christian mccaffrey, it’s George Kittle, it’s the offensive line.
It’s all these things around him that make Brock Purdy great and not once has anyone stopped and said, maybe we’re carrying around the stigma of this guy being the last pick in the draft.
And so to us, we’re always saying he’s an overachiever when maybe it’s the NFL teams that underachieved in their draft assessment.
Maybe he actually was a better player than anybody thought.
And yet we still are carrying around this thought process of, yeah, he’s just, he’s playing above his head right now and it’s because of all the surrounding pieces.
Well, he has an opportunity to affect that right now.
Christian mccaffrey goes out looks like it’s gonna be multiple weeks.
Debo Samuel goes out looks like it’s gonna be multiple weeks.
George Kittle hobbled now by a hamstring, you have an ability to now step in and say it’s me.
It’s not the system.
I am the system.
And I’ll just bring up a conversation I had with him in training camp where in the off season he had made this conversation public about how he wanted to be a dominant NFL player.
And I asked him, I’m like, why, why, like why put that out there?
He told me and this is, this is paraphrasing here, but he was like, I want my teammates to hear that.
I want people in the organization to hear that.
I want people to know that this is my mindset, this is who I wanna be.
And this is what I wanna do because I’m not afraid of that and it’s what the Rams game has got to be about for him.
He doesn’t have the surrounding skill position pieces that everyone is focused, his talent and success through.
Now he gets the chance to show people that I am the reason why I have this talent and success.
It’s not a function of other players being great.
Why has this become such a big deal in NFL?
Talk that we, you have to assign a guy?
Oh, he’s a system quarterback.
He’s not a system quarterback.
Patrick Holmes is obviously incredibly talented dude, Andy Reid helps him.
Almost every great player has been with a great coach too that could get the most out of it.
I told you, I already told you why I just told you why.
Because when we look at Brock Purdy, we see last pick in the draft, not big.
His arm is not elite, it’s not an upper level arm.
It’s OK.
He goes out and does what Shanahan wants him to do.
OK.
He has all these elite pieces around him and so those become these diminishing aspects about him.
Um and, and people just can’t get away from it.