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No franchise has gotten more out of football's most unremarkable plays than the San Francisco 49ers. And the 2025 season, interestingly, complicated that story.
Pro Football Focus's Mark Chichester looked at an often-overlooked quarterback stat: "zero-graded throws." These passes aren't blown assignments or highlight-reel plays, but rather throws where a quarterback is simply "doing his job," per Chichester, and making the play an NFL passer would be expected to make. The metric essentially tracks how a quarterback executes the offense he's in and how that offense produces by design.
Quarterbacks are, oddly enough, historically bad at this stat. Across nearly 221,500 zero-graded attempts from PFF since 2006, only one season has finished net-positive, with the average sitting at -0.060 expected points added (EPA) per attempt.
The 49ers have bucked that trend, though. They've been the league's most consistent outlier in routine throws for two decades, and especially during the Kyle Shanahan era starting in 2017.
Since 2006, three different 49ers quarterbacks rank among the top five in career EPA per attempt on zero-graded throws: Jimmy Garoppolo (No. 1, +0.111), Nick Mullens (No. 2, +0.076) and Brock Purdy (No. 5, +0.023). The trend holds on yards per attempt too, where Garoppolo, Purdy and Mullens sweep the top three spots outright at 6.43, 6.01 and 5.81 yards per attempt, respectively, which is ahead of every other qualifying quarterback in the sample.
None of the three arrived in San Francisco with much experience, either. Garoppolo was a change-of-scenery trade after a few stars with the New England Patriots, Mullens went undrafted, and Purdy was the final pick of his draft class. That all three rank among the most efficient passers in football on the plays that simply require executing the offense as designed speaks to how much Shanahan's scheme elevates quarterback play, regardless of who's under center.
But 2025 offered a wrinkle in that narrative. While Purdy's career mark remains elite, his individual 2025 season was one of his roughest by this metric: He finished 30th out of 41 qualifiers at -0.1599 EPA per attempt, which is a steep drop for a quarterback whose career average sits firmly in positive territory.
Even strong offensive systems can have off years, and Purdy's 2025 numbers on these routine throws lagged well behind the standard he and his Niners predecessors have set since 2006.
The 49ers have been one of the most consistent offenses in the NFL under Shanahan, largely without a true stud at quarterback. But since those players have executed the offense routinely, it's made it easier for the team to perform with an MVP-caliber star like Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen or Matthew Stafford. Purdy, though, has proven to come close to that on both regards and he'll have another chance to make a name for himself in 2026.
This article originally appeared on Niners Wire: 49ers QBs have dominated this boring pass stat since 2006
Continue reading...
Pro Football Focus's Mark Chichester looked at an often-overlooked quarterback stat: "zero-graded throws." These passes aren't blown assignments or highlight-reel plays, but rather throws where a quarterback is simply "doing his job," per Chichester, and making the play an NFL passer would be expected to make. The metric essentially tracks how a quarterback executes the offense he's in and how that offense produces by design.
Quarterbacks are, oddly enough, historically bad at this stat. Across nearly 221,500 zero-graded attempts from PFF since 2006, only one season has finished net-positive, with the average sitting at -0.060 expected points added (EPA) per attempt.
The 49ers have bucked that trend, though. They've been the league's most consistent outlier in routine throws for two decades, and especially during the Kyle Shanahan era starting in 2017.
Since 2006, three different 49ers quarterbacks rank among the top five in career EPA per attempt on zero-graded throws: Jimmy Garoppolo (No. 1, +0.111), Nick Mullens (No. 2, +0.076) and Brock Purdy (No. 5, +0.023). The trend holds on yards per attempt too, where Garoppolo, Purdy and Mullens sweep the top three spots outright at 6.43, 6.01 and 5.81 yards per attempt, respectively, which is ahead of every other qualifying quarterback in the sample.
None of the three arrived in San Francisco with much experience, either. Garoppolo was a change-of-scenery trade after a few stars with the New England Patriots, Mullens went undrafted, and Purdy was the final pick of his draft class. That all three rank among the most efficient passers in football on the plays that simply require executing the offense as designed speaks to how much Shanahan's scheme elevates quarterback play, regardless of who's under center.
But 2025 offered a wrinkle in that narrative. While Purdy's career mark remains elite, his individual 2025 season was one of his roughest by this metric: He finished 30th out of 41 qualifiers at -0.1599 EPA per attempt, which is a steep drop for a quarterback whose career average sits firmly in positive territory.
Even strong offensive systems can have off years, and Purdy's 2025 numbers on these routine throws lagged well behind the standard he and his Niners predecessors have set since 2006.
The 49ers have been one of the most consistent offenses in the NFL under Shanahan, largely without a true stud at quarterback. But since those players have executed the offense routinely, it's made it easier for the team to perform with an MVP-caliber star like Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen or Matthew Stafford. Purdy, though, has proven to come close to that on both regards and he'll have another chance to make a name for himself in 2026.
This article originally appeared on Niners Wire: 49ers QBs have dominated this boring pass stat since 2006
Continue reading...
