Questions With Many Consequences: Who Is Quarterbacking the 49ers?

One of the most important questions in fantasy football this season will be who is starting at quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers. The 49ers’ offense is one of the most fertile teams for fantasy production, but that production is dependent on the man under center delivering the football to these skill players. Will it be 2022 breakout Brock Purdy, or 2021 No. 3 overall pick Trey Lance? The answer will have drastic effects on the outlook for nearly all of the 49ers’ pass catchers and running backs.

We will start with the surprise of the season, Brock Purdy. Purdy’s success was a major shock to just about anyone who watches football, but over time a debate began to brew over whether Purdy was just a grossly underdrafted prospect, or if his performance should be attributed to Kyle Shanahan being able to craft a high-powered offense around any old QB. Additionally, is Purdy a downgrade from Jimmy Garoppolo, who started the most games for the 49ers in 2022 and is now gone to Las Vegas.

Purdy started five games for the 49ers, throwing for 1,374 yards, 13 touchdowns and four interceptions while completing 67.1% of his attempts. He averaged a modest 152.7 yards per game, understandable for a seventh-round rookie operating an offense with Super Bowl expectations, but he was also remarkably efficient when it came to scoring touchdowns. Purdy threw for at least two touchdowns in every game he started for the 49ers, and posted a 7.6% TD rate. For context, Patrick Mahomes and Tua Tagovailoa tied as the league leader in 2022 with a mark of 6.3% (Purdy did not have enough attempts to qualify). By comparison, Garoppolo, whom many perceived as the better option for the 49ers’ skill players due to his experience, threw only three more touchdown passes despite double the starts of Purdy. Garoppolo only had three games in which he threw the ball 35+ times vs. Purdy’s two, played in five games in which he threw for fewer than two touchdowns, and threw for more than two touchdowns only once…the same amount of times as Purdy. This is a long way of saying that, by the numbers, Purdy is no downgrade from Jimmy G, and in fact was more efficient and could be a big upgrade if he blossoms further with more time as the starter.

We should note that this is an overall comparison though, and the idea here is to figure out what it means for the 49ers’ key skill players Deebo Samuel, Brandon Aiyuk, George Kittle and Christian McCaffery. The per game numbers for Samuel, Aiyuk and Kittle were all nearly identical with Purdy and Garoppolo, while McCaffery’s receiving production went up once Purdy took over.

So if Purdy is ready for Week 1 and is the starter as most expect, your evaluations of these fantasy-relevant players shouldn’t change. In fact, you should be even higher on them in all likelihood, since Purdy should improve.

Lance cannot be counted out at this point though, and it’s possible that they fight until the end of training camp for the starting job. Money talks, and Lance is a player making significantly more money than Purdy, cost far greater draft capital, and required the 49ers to move even more draft capital to be in position to take him. Also, Lance is a completely different style of QB than Purdy, one who has a skill set that is closer to the new prototype of successful QBs (think Jalen Hurts, Josh Allen). Should Lance be the man under center for this team, the 49ers will likely still have a great offense. We mentioned earlier that Shanahan has proven he can succeed with many different players running the show. But Lance under center likely means steep downgrades for some of, if not all of Samuel, Aiyuk and Kittle. Purdy wasn’t a prolific passer, but he was efficient. Lance entered the league about as raw as a prospect can be as a passer, and since being drafted he’s only played in eight games (four starts). In his final start of 2022, he only managed four pass attempts before suffering a brutal, season-ending leg injury. So what we have here is a player who possesses tremendous physical traits, but has never thrown 30 times in a game nor amassed 250 passing yards. His career 151.3 yards per game are right on par with Purdy, but Purdy completed his passes at a 12% better clip and managed to actually throw touchdown passes. Lance has only managed a touchdown pass in one of the three games in which he saw meaningful action, and is a prolific rusher at the position.

Starting Lance would signal a shift for this offense heavily in the direction of the run game. Not only would Lance be a solid source of ground production, raising his own fantasy floor, his presence would no doubt open big play opportunities for Christian McCaffery and Elijah Mitchell, even if he vultures some short yardage touchdown opportunities. We can also count on big plays from this offense, regardless of the QB, because of Shanahan’s design. But Lance under center removes the consistency and efficiency that Purdy provided, and makes all of the pass-catchers much more volatile on a week-to-week basis, lowering all of their values. Lance being the starter would be seismic for fantasy, shaking up the QB picture as well as changing the value of two potentially elite receivers and a Top 5 TE.

My money’s on Purdy, but this is a situation we all must monitor closely all summer.