Brock Purdy

Where He's Expected to Land

Nova's median season: 249 points at 18.88 per game, 3,391.7 passing yards, 24.2 passing touchdowns, 220.4 rushing yards, 3.7 rushing scores. The distribution runs from a 96-point floor to a 457-point ceiling, with a likely finish window of QB8–QB31: a polite way of saying the range of outcomes at this price is enormous.

Format matters more than usual. PPR: rank 90, Tier 6. Half-PPR: 86. Standard: 83 (Tier 7). Superflex: 40th overall, Tier 8, 51 VORP, twenty times his 1QB value. In 2QB, he's a priority, not a dart.

The Last Three Seasons

Finishes and PPG per Ian Hartitz of Fantasy Life (June 3, 2026). The 2025 line hides the story: a Week 1 turf toe injury cost Purdy eight games. Nova's game log shows nine appearances, including a Weeks 15–17 heater of 26.2, 30.9, and 36.9 PPR points; Hartitz pegs him at 23.5 PPG from his Week 11 return onward. When he was right, he was a weekly top-3 scorer. He just wasn't right very often.

What Changed for Him This Offseason

Mostly: he got healthy. Purdy, 26, reported to the offseason program with the toe behind him. Kyle Shanahan told reporters the staff gives Purdy roughly five offseason fix-its off the film cut-ups each year, and that he typically has them cleaned up by camp (NBC Sports Bay Area, March 30).

Offensive coordinator Klay Kubiak was more specific in May: pocket footwork and mechanics, staying a passer on plays where Purdy's instinct is to bail and run (49ers Webzone, May 7). That's a staff trying to raise the passing ceiling of a guy Nova projects for only 220 rushing yards. Don't draft him expecting Konami-code legs.

What Changed Around Him

The receiver room was gutted and rebuilt. Gone: Jauan Jennings and Kendrick Bourne in free agency, with Brandon Aiyuk, who publicly said he won't be reinstating with the team, headed out the door. In: Mike Evans on a three-year, $42.5M deal that's functionally a one-year, $14.3M guarantee (ESPN's Nick Wagoner, March 18), slot man Christian Kirk at $6M, and first-round rookie WR De'Zhaun Stribling. Evans turns 33 in August and played only eight games in 2025, but he brings red-zone gravity this offense has never given Purdy, 27 touchdowns on tight-window throws over the past decade, most in the NFL.

Two more items cut in opposite directions. Christian McCaffrey is back off a monster 2025 (2,126 scrimmage yards, 17 TDs), which stabilizes the offense but caps pass volume. George Kittle tore his Achilles in January's Wild Card win over Philadelphia; he's targeting the Week 1 opener in Melbourne, while skeptics project Weeks 6–8 (Front Office Sports interview, via 49ers Webzone, May 26). Up front, Trent Williams, 37, allowed 32 pressures last season, his most since 2013, and the succession plan is a swing tackle and a fifth-round pick (49ers Webzone, July 9). Purdy's clean pockets are no longer a given.

What They're Saying

The camp chatter is almost uniformly bullish on the new connection. "Him and Brock immediately established a rhythm, which was really fun to watch," George Kittle said of Evans on the Up & Adams podcast (June 10), adding that Evans scored three times in a single red-zone period at OTAs. NFL Media's Dan Parr went as far as calling Purdy a dark-horse MVP candidate on the strength of the upgraded supporting cast (via 49ers Webzone, July 9).

Nova has priced most of this in. A 24.2-TD, 3,392-yard median is the healthy-efficiency season the beat is describing, spread across 13.2 games. The chatter is about talent; the model's hesitation is about availability.

The Buzz

Analyst sentiment has been climbing all offseason: Hartitz bumped Purdy from QB14 to QB10 in April and by June was arguing the market prices Purdy near his floor while ignoring his ceiling, he goes off the board after 44 wide receivers and 34 running backs. FantasyPros' Derek Brown piled on July 6: "If you're not respecting Brock Purdy at this point as a strong QB1, I really don't know what to tell you." Yet ADP hasn't moved, 96.3, a round-8 price. The crowd talks like he's a buy and drafts like he's a fade. Nova sits closer to the drafters than the pundits, and the 13.2-game projection is the reason.

Swing Factors

• Games played (±80 pts): Nova's median already bakes in ~4 missed games. Every game above 13.2 at his 18.9 PPG clip is nearly a full week of surplus; a 17-game season alone pushes him toward the 320s.
• Kittle's Achilles (±25 pts): Week 1 return keeps the league's best play-action tight end in the funnel; a Weeks 6–8 return hands early targets to a 33-year-old Evans and a rookie.
• Evans aging curve (±20 pts): eight games in 2025 and a contract built to be exited after one year, the front office hedged, and your projection should too.
• Trent Williams erosion (−15 pts): 32 pressures allowed last year, no proven successor. Purdy's efficiency profile has never been stress-tested behind a bad blind side.
• September schedule (drag on early ROI): the Nova page lists early SOS at 8.3 and playoff SOS at 8.0, both flagged tough on-site, including a Week 1 trip to Melbourne against the Rams.

If Everything Goes Right / If Everything Goes Wrong

If everything goes right: the toe stays boring, Kittle jogs out of the tunnel in Melbourne, and Evans turns those OTA red-zone reps into 10 real touchdowns. Purdy plays 17 games at the 23.5 PPG he posted after returning last November and runs toward the 457-point ceiling of the sim, a top-3 overall QB season taken at pick 96. Nova gives the tier-1 outcome 19%, and tier-2-or-better 39%.

If everything goes wrong: the pocket behind a declining 37-year-old left tackle gets loud, another lower-body injury lands in October, and the Evans signing ages the way one-year-guarantee contracts for 33-year-old receivers usually do. The distribution bottoms out at 96 points, a half-season of streaming headaches. Per healthy start, though, the floor is sturdy: only a 13% bust rate (under 10 points), against 45% boom weeks. The V-grade DNA means the weekly ride is spiky even when the season-long math works.

Nova's Edge

The industry's Purdy take and Nova's diverge on axis, not direction. FantasyPros consensus and Fantasy Life have him QB9–QB10 and call the room crazy for letting him fall to pick 96; Nova ranks him 90th, essentially agreeing with the drafters the pundits are scolding. The gap is the games projection. If you believe the turf toe was a fluke, draft him a round ahead of Nova's rank, per healthy game, the model itself rates him among the position's best. If you think a QB whose OC made pocket discipline the offseason project will keep absorbing hits, the market price is fair. No DraftKings prop rows appear on his Nova page yet, so the model-vs-Vegas read isn't available, the divergence that matters is Nova vs. the takes, and Nova is the cooler head.

The Bottom Line

In 1QB leagues, let the room set the price: fair value at his 96.3 ADP (round 8 of a 12-teamer), a clear buy in rounds 9–10, a reach in round 7 with a QB8–QB31 finish window this wide. Pair him with a late streamer who covers his September and Week 8 bye. In superflex, Tier 8, 51 VORP, top-40 overall, take him two to three rounds earlier. A Purdy–Evans stack is cheap and correlated in best ball. The gradeable claim: if Purdy plays 15+ games in 2026, he finishes top-6 in points per game, and Nova's 45% boom rate is the number we'll point to in January.