Yes, Brock Purdy landed in the perfect spot for a flawed-but-accurate quarterback. The San Francisco 49ers have long cried out for a passer who can make the right reads and escape the baffling decisions and occasionally awful throws of the Jimmy Garoppolo era — an era that resulted in three trips to the NFC title game or beyond in the last four years, by the way.
That need resulted in an offense that creates swaths of wide open space and trusts its playmakers to capitalize on it. The 49ers have led the league in yards after the catch in five of the last six seasons, including in 2023. This year, they’re profiting from a full campaign from Christian McCaffrey, who is on pace to be just the sixth player in NFL history to score 25 total touchdowns.
The man in the middle is Purdy, who is recording one of the most efficient seasons of quarterbacking in NFL history. His 119.0 passer rating would rank fifth-best all time. His 0.405 adjusted expected points added (EPA) per play is higher than Patrick Mahomes’ in either his 2022 MVP season (0.305) or 2018 MVP season (0.380). He leads the league in touchdown passes, touchdown rate, yards per attempt, adjusted yards per attempt and, well, just about any efficiency statistic you can measure.
That’s why he’s at the top of this week’s quarterback rankings once more — and why the gulf between him and the next closest competitor has widened. Purdy threw four touchdown passes in a sterling performance against the overmatched Arizona Cardinals. Dak Prescott, his closest competition when it came to both advanced stats and MVP odds coming into Week 15, sputtered in a blowout loss to the Buffalo Bills.
So where’s that leave Prescott, aside from “behind Brock Purdy?” Let’s crunch some numbers.
Expected points added (EPA) is a concept that’s been around since 1970. It’s effectively a comparison between what an average quarterback could be expected to do on a certain down and what he actually did — and how it increased his team’s chances of scoring. The model we use comes from The Athletic’s Ben Baldwin and his RBSDM.com website, which is both wildly useful AND includes adjusted EPA, which accounts for defensive strength. It considers the impact of penalties and does not negatively impact passers for fumbles after a completion.
The other piece of the puzzle is completion percentage over expected (CPOE), which is pretty much what it sounds like. It’s a comparison of all the completions a quarterback would be expected to make versus the ones he actually did. Like EPA, it can veer into the negatives and higher is better. So if you chart all 31 primary quarterbacks — the ones who played at least 240 snaps in 15 weeks — you get a chart that looks like this:
Top right hand corner is good. Bottom left corner is bad. Try splitting those passers visually into tiers and you get an imperfect eight-layer system that looks like this:
These rankings are sorted by a composite of adjusted EPA and CPOE to better understand who has brought the most — and the least — value to their teams across the small sample size. It’s not a full exploration of a player’s value, but it’s a viable starting point. Let’s take a closer look.
1
Yes, he is the most obvious MVP candidate
1. Brock Purdy, San Francisco 49ers: 0.221 EPA+CPOE composite
Barring a complete disaster, he’s going to finish 2023 as the league’s most efficient passer for a division champion who’ll probably be the NFC’s top seed. Those are all MVP bonafides. I don’t know what else to tell you.
2
They've also got compelling(ish) MVP cases
2. Tua Tagovailoa, Miami Dolphins: 0.156 EPA+CPOE composite
3. Dak Prescott, Dallas Cowboys: 0.152
4. Josh Allen, Buffalo Bills: 0.148
Prescott’s push to unseat Purdy landed with a resounding thud in Sunday evening’s zero touchdown performance in a 31-10 loss to the Bills. Allen’s two scores, on the other hand, helped keep him in the MVP race and Buffalo in the hunt for a playoff bid despite a 3-5 stretch from Week 5 to Week 12.
3
Guys you trust in the postseason (mostly)
5. Kirk Cousins, Minnesota Vikings: 0.134 EPA+CPOE composite
6. Jalen Hurts, Philadelphia Eagles: 0.125
7. Patrick Mahomes, Kansas City Chiefs: 0.125
8. Jared Goff, Detroit Lions: 0.104
9. Lamar Jackson, Baltimore Ravens: 0.100
Goff pushed himself back into the third tier with an explosive five-touchdown day against the Denver Broncos — a game that simultaneously pushed Russell Wilson off it. Jackson is a viable MVP candidate despite his merely “good” counting and advanced stats. What he does on the field isn’t quantifiable by numbers, but does emerge on the faces of defenders who’ve tried to stop him.
This sequence is just SO incredible
Lamar Jackson hits Isaiah Likely for a big gain on one of the best plays you’ll see after avoiding Dawuane Smoot twice
All Smoot can do after is scream “HOW?” at Jackson, shake his head, and scream again in frustration pic.twitter.com/jiaOCiffqT
— Kevin Oestreicher (@koestreicher34) December 18, 2023
4
Very good, very inconsistent (or otherwise not quite trustable)
10. Russell Wilson, Denver Broncos: 0.97 EPA+CPOE composite
11. Baker Mayfield, Tampa Bay Buccaneers: 0.092
12. Trevor Lawrence, Jacksonville Jaguars: 0.088
13. Jordan Love, Green Bay Packers: 0.088
14. CJ Stroud, Houston Texans: 0.86
15. Geno Smith, Seattle Seahawks: 0.075
Wilson is falling back to the pack after a hot start. Lawrence has been butt since spraining his ankle two weeks ago. Love is capable of top 10 play and bottom five play, occasionally in the same game (this happened in Week 15). Mayfield had a nearly perfect day to beat the Packers and keep Tampa Bay atop the NFC South and has added a zero to his future paychecks in the process.
5
Guys who are capable of more and got derailed by injury (or being Sam Howell)
16. Justin Herbert, Los Angeles Chargers: 0.073 EPA+CPOE composite
17. Derek Carr, New Orleans Saints: 0.058
18. Matthew Stafford, Los Angeles Rams: 0.061
19. Joe Burrow, Cincinnati Bengals: 0.069
20. Sam Howell, Washington Commanders: 0.067
Herbert’s going to end 2023 as roughly average, per advanced stats. The Chargers’ top priority going forward must be finding the head coach who can push him to his top 10 potential. Stafford has been charging up the ranks and put his Rams into the playoff hunt as a result. Los Angeles — the one that still has a full-time head coach — looks like a team no one wants to face with their season on the line.
6
I guess things could be worse
21. Will Levis, Tennessee Titans: 0.048 EPA+CPOE composite
22. Justin Fields, Chicago Bears: 0.041
23. Gardner Minshew II, Indianapolis Colts: 0.041
24. Desmond Ridder, Atlanta Falcons: 0.027
25. Daniel Jones, New York Giants: 0.026
Ridder’s red zone woes have led him to be benched … again. The Falcons will turn to Taylor Heinicke with their playoff hopes in the balance. Minshew remains the idea low-cost, high-value backup who can exceed expecations in a pinch. Jones’ 0.026 composite score is much better than Tommy DeVito’s 0.009, in case you were curious.
7
How things get worse
26. Joshua Dobbs, Arizona Cardinals/Minnesota Vikings: 0.020 EPA+CPOE composite
27. Kenny Pickett, Pittsburgh Steelers: 0.019
28. Bryce Young, Carolina Panthers: 0.014
29. Mac Jones, New England Patriots: 0.011
Congrats to Young, who not only doubled his NFL win total in Week 15 but also moved up from the bottom three starting quarterbacks in 2023. The other three guys on this tier didn’t play last week, though the Steelers would really, really like to have Pickett and his two to three good fourth quarter throws per game back.
8
Very bad.
30. Zach Wilson, New York Jets: 0.008 EPA+CPOE composite
31. Aidan O’Connell, Las Vegas Raiders: 0.000
Wilson has been so bad that a -13 EPA in fewer than two quarters of work didn’t knock his composite score down at at all. O’Connell has been so bad an 11.4 EPA night against the Chargers raised his score one hundreth of a point. Ah well, at least he’s no longer in the negatives.
