Niners Nation
He’s not better or worse, but choosing between him and some of the other losers of Wild Card Weekend shouldn’t be that easy.
Welcome to the divisional round of the NFL playoffs. This year, the San Francisco 49ers are missing in action but they certainly are a talking point. This is the part of the show where we expose some bad takes about quarterback Brock Purdy.
Initially, this was going to be about Minnesota Vikings quarterback Sam Darnold’s performance on Monday, but when you see some other quarterbacks who were also jettisonedin the first round, the entire quarterback landscape becomes a talking point.
But let’s get right to that Darnold performance. On Monday, the Vikings and the Los Angeles Rams faced off. Darnold went 25 for 40 (62.5 percent completion), with one touchdown, one interception, and nine (9) sacks.
Why are we bringing this up? Well, that’s because after Week 2 of the 2024 NFL season, you might have seen an ill-advised take (READ: stupid) of Brock Purdy and Sam Darnold. The general discussion revolved around whether the 49ers made a bad decision keeping Purdy over Darnold.
And the responses that followed through the season are about what you expect. The logic is Darnold has the better arm and athletic intangibles and could be worth less than Purdy. While Purdy lost his weapons and his defense faltered, Darnold looked much different than the Sam Darnold we remember on the New York Jets.
Except Brock Purdy is known for processing speed, even in the playoffs while Sam Darnold’s processing in the postseason is remember he’s Sam Darnold. Yes, comparing the 49ers’ 2023 offensive line to the Vikings’ 2024 offensive line is a bad comparison. But nine sacks in a playoff game? Purdy hasn’t had that many sacks in both of his playoff campaigns combined, let alone in a single game. Purdy has had backups for an O-line to end the season and even then he didn’t take more than three sacks a game.
Then there’s Jordan Love, quarterback of the Green Bay Packers. He Makes $55 million a year, by the way. In October, there were gems of how Love was a better signal caller than Purdy. This piggybacks off the NFC Divisional between he 49ers and the Packers last year where people claimed they’d trust Love more than Purdy in the playoffs. All because he embarrassed the Dallas Cowboys in the Cowboys’ stadium during the NFC wild-card round last year. We can’t say Love “outplayed” Purdy when the 49ers and Packers met again in the 2024 regular season because Purdy was out due to injury.
In that aforementioned NFC Divisional between the 49ers and Packers, it seemed like Love got a pass for throwing a game-sealing interception into the hands of 49ers linebacker Dre Greenlaw. Mostly because of how he played up to that point. Sure, it was not yet time for a throw that desperate, but the talk was more about how Purdy struggled in the rain during that...
