Brock Purdy Scouting Report 2022 NFL Draft
Everybody keeps waiting for Brock Purdy to take the next step. He was impressive as a freshman, and followed it up with a really good sophomore year. With expectations sky high, his performance fell off, and Breece Hall became the beloved center of the offense. He wasn’t bad, but more was expected. You may have heard that Covid-19 slightly altered things in people’s lives last year, and football was no exception. The question is whether Purdy is ready to bounce back or was his junior year his true self? I decided to take a look at one of Iowa State’s most impressive wins, in their game against Oregon in the Fiesta Bowl.
In this game, Purdy was as protected as a quarterback can get as nearly everything was within five yards of the line of scrimmage. His throws were shockingly short, but it got the job done so I can’t really argue with the strategy.
Accuracy
They let him throw it down the field on occasion, and this is about as good of a ball that you can throw.
Purdy throws a back shoulder fade thrown right along the sideline, and there isn’t much a defensive back can do when the ball is thrown there. This pass was 27 yards down the field, and it was by far his longest throw of the day. I’m honestly not sure if he threw anything even half that far throughout the rest of the game.
Aggressiveness
As I said, Iowa State beat Oregon, doubling them up for a 34-17 victory so it’s hard to fault the conservative strategy, but I’m going to find a way to fault the conservative strategy.
This is 3rd and 4. That is not something anyone would consider long. But still, on 3rd and 4, he throws a pass that goes two yards. He got rescued by his receiver making a tackler miss and finding his way past the first down marker. If you don’t have the guts to throw it past the sticks when you need FOUR yards, that’s an issue. This was not a one-time thing, as I saw him repeatedly throw it short of the sticks. Luckily, his receivers find ways to bail him out and gain YAC.
Pocket Presence
He didn’t look comfortable with pocket presence. His go-to move to delay rushers was to bail. Sometimes, he would drift backwards which is not ideal when trying to gain positive yardage. He was also able to use average athleticism to scramble outside of the pocket on occasion, but he rarely kept his eyes down the field when avoiding the rush.
Iowa St. Cyclones QB Brock Purdy (15).
Conclusion
It’s just one game, and that always makes it tough to give a final evaluation on anybody. What I saw was a decent athlete with very good short-to-intermediate accuracy. It’s good to remember that Iowa State was playing Oregon in this game. They probably didn’t have the speed advantage in too many areas of this game so the slow but steady approach proved to be wise. Still, there were opportunities to push the ball down the field, and he cost his team first downs by always taking the underneath route.
This is a huge year for Purdy. His yards per throw has been declining which has caused the scouting community to cool on him after some early hype. Iowa State’s Week 2 game against the Iowa Hawkeyes will be a great indicator on what kind of prospect Purdy will be. Improvement could lead to him being a second round pick. But if he’s the same quarterback he was in 2020, Purdy will be lucky to get drafted at all.
