Brock Purdy didn’t have a spotless afternoon in Seattle, but the numbers around him still tell a very loud story: he’s sitting at the top of the MVP race.
After the 49ers’ 32-29 win over the Seahawks, Purdy is tied with Bills quarterback Josh Allen for the best odds to win Most Valuable Player, with FanDuel Sportsbook listing both at +300. That comes after a game that had its rough patches, but also gave Purdy another chance to answer the familiar question: can he drive a team down the field when it matters?
Against one of the league’s best defenses, he did.
Purdy finished 19 for 29 for 65 percent completions, with two touchdowns, one interception, and three sacks, his first three sacks of the year. He also posted a 92.5 passer rating, his first sub-100 mark of 2026. Still, when the 49ers needed a key scoring march that didn’t start on Seattle’s side of the field, Purdy delivered.
That drive mattered. The second series after it stalled out, thanks in part to some strange playcalling from Kyle Shanahan, but the first one was exactly the kind of answer Purdy keeps stacking up.
He moved the 49ers down the field against a division opponent and a defense that has been among the NFL’s best for years, then helped finish it with a two-point conversion when it counted. After that, the 49ers’ defense finished the job.
“I thought Brock did an unbelievable job finding a way there to win at the end,” Kyle Shanahan said following the game. “That’s [Seattle Seahawks] one of the best defenses in the league, one of the best defenses over these last few years.”
The setting matters here. This was in Seattle, against a rival, and against a defense that can make life miserable on almost any quarterback.
Purdy also dealt with intentional grounding and other “penalties” that could have blown up that 49ers drive. Even so, he still found a way to get the ball to the end zone.
There was also a little bit of strange scoreboard theater involving Brandin Cooks, who the 49ers have had for only two weeks. Purdy threw not one but two touchdown passes to Cooks, though one was wiped out by a late timeout call.
And while some will try to ding him for facing a four-man rush, that still means he’s dealing with eight defenders behind it. Purdy kept sorting through that coverage and finding answers.
He’s also only five pass attempts away from qualifying for the NFL’s all-time career passer rating leaderboard. Even after this game, it’s hard to imagine he’ll land anywhere but near the top when he gets there. If Purdy was going to fade into a pumpkin, it likely would have happened long before he reached the 1,500-pass-attempt mark required for that list.
“There’s some ups and downs,” Shanahan said. “By no means was everything perfect.
But I thought he was really good in the fourth quarter; there are a lot of times when something wasn’t there, and he made some plays. Hell of a game by Brock”
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