You’d think it’d be tough to cook quarterbacks when you were part of the brain trust that drafted JaMarcus Russell first overall, but that didn’t stop former Raiders CEO Amy Trask from throwing serious shade at San Francisco 49ers QB Brock Purdy.
Trask weighed in on the remaining signal-callers in the Divisional Round on the latest edition of What The Football, and had some choice words for Mr. Irrelevant, who’s a very real outlier among the seven first-round QBs still playing.
Now to be fair, Trask clarified that she thinks Purdy is a good quarterback. It’s just that she doesn’t have him in the same category as the other seven.
When two of the other seven guys are Jared Goff and Baker Mayfield — all due respect to them, love ’em both, especially Baker — I struggle to see Purdy as a comfortable rung below the rest of the pack. No debate on Patrick Mahomes or Josh Allen. No first-year starters have maybe ever played better than Jordan Love and CJ Stroud are right now. But Goff and Baker? Hmm.
Other than that disastrous, four-INT unraveling Purdy put out against the Ravens, he’s been lights-out all season. What I will say about Purdy is, he can’t afford to be the reason the 49ers lose.
They’re the No. 1 seed in the NFC. Double-digit home favorites. Yes, his counterpart Love is playing out of his skin right now, but Green Bay has a soft defense that Purdy should carve up if his NFL-leading 113.0 passer rating is any genuine indication.
I was being a little sarcastic about Trask’s hand in drafting JaMarcus, but that’s the point everyone’s running with. Part of me doesn’t want to pile on. On the other hand, it just seems like Purdy has earned more credibility by being a clear upgrade over Jimmy Garoppolo, who led the Niners to two NFC Championship Game berths and got them to a Super Bowl. Jimmy G has a 4-2 playoff record with a 74.1 passer rating. If Purdy is even 10 points higher in that category, it might be enough for San Francisco to win the Lombardi Trophy.
Until he eats sh*t in the postseason like Garoppolo routinely did, I’d put Purdy at least in the category of Goff and Baker.
You want a current, league-wide top-20-ish QB rankings to close this thang out, with a “*” to denote those in the playoffs!? Of course you do. Alright. Here it is. Let’s see where Purdy, Goff and Baker stack up in the opinion of yours truly.
Tier 1: Elite AF
1. Patrick Mahomes*
2. Joe Burrow
3. Josh Allen*
4. Lamar Jackson*
Tier 2: Best of the rest
5. CJ Stroud*
6. Matthew Stafford
7. Jordan Love*
8. Justin Herbert
Tier 3: High-end starters
9. Brock Purdy*
10. Aaron Rodgers (injured though, we’ll see)
11. Jalen Hurts
12. Tua Tagovailoa
13. Jared Goff*
14. Baker Mayfield*
15. Kirk Cousins
16. Dak Prescott
Tier 4: Beautifully flawed
17. Trevor Lawrence
18. Kyler Murray
Tier 5: Clinging to QB1 jobs for dear life
19. Geno Smith
20. Derek Carr
21. Justin Fields
Promising but too early to rank: Anthony Richardson, Will Levis
