It’s ironic that Brock Purdy’s NFL calling card has become how underhyped he was coming out of the draft. Mr. Irrelevant. Uncertain to make the roster. Picked so late some said it’d be better to be an undrafted free agent and have some choice over his destination. Why is this ironic? Because the criticism on Purdy over his last three years at Iowa State was that he was failing to meet expectations.
Brock Purdy did big things as a freshman in Ames, upsetting West Virginia in his second full game and leading the Cyclones, as a true freshman quarterback, to the Alamo Bowl—a great destination for the Iowa State program. While his sophomore, junior, and senior years weren’t bad—if we liked making the Alamo Bowl, imagine how we felt about winning the Fiesta Bowl—he was the kind of guy who got tossed around as a Heisman possibility in the preseason and exited the discussion shortly thereafter. His worst performance, as we’ve said too many times now, came in the biggest game in Cyclone football history, the 2021 Cy-Hawk Game with College Gameday in town and top-ten rankings on the score bug. Brock Purdy was a good quarterback, and we loved him, and he isn’t far behind Seneca Wallace on the list of all-time Iowa State greats. But for as good a player and leader as Purdy was, he never quite harnessed the upside he once showed.
Purdy remains an enigma this afternoon, headed to his first Super Bowl on the heels of a dynamic comeback partly of his own creation. He’s a hard player to pin down. His longest completion yesterday went through Kindle Vildor’s hands and off Kindle Vildor’s facemask. He had a hard time in the first half. He made great throws and he made great plays with his feet and he did his part in taking the best team in the NFC to the Super Bowl. It still didn’t feel like Brock Purdy played a great game of football. Somewhere in this lies a kind of astonishing truth:
Brock Purdy, good enough to win the NFC, good enough to contend for the MVP, good enough to have people who know what they’re watching (Matt Leinart, Richard Sherman, JJ Watt, plenty more) bill him as far more than the game manager his critics denounce him as…That same Brock Purdy could be a whole lot better.
The maddening thing about Brock Purdy’s college years was that he would play a lot like he played yesterday: Certain plays, he looked like Patrick Mahomes, throwing darts and turning coverage sacks into first downs. Other plays, he missed wide-open targets. Still more, he put the game in his opponent’s hands in a bid to spark a comeback. With some quarterbacks, this is a streaky phenomenon. It differs game to game or half to half. With Brock Purdy, it sometimes differs within the same drive.
You would imagine a quarterback like Brock Purdy will continue to grow. There’s an argument against it—he was a freshman at Iowa State five years ago and we’re still having a similar experience to what we had back then—but the man is getting better. He’s doing to NFL defenses what he once did to the Big 12. That’s improvement. Also, he just turned 24. He’s in his second season as a pro. Brock Purdy is far from a finished product.
The bad thing about Brock Purdy is that he isn’t the same quarterback every play. The good thing about Brock Purdy is that on his best plays, he’s up there with any quarterback in the world. He seems to be moving more and more towards the latter. It isn’t always obvious, but the evidence is too strong to ignore.
Three more thoughts after yesterday’s games:
1. Dan Campbell was right.
I didn’t have any issue with any of Dan Campbell’s fourth-down decisions as they came. In hindsight, the only one I’d change would be the field goal at the end of the first half. The three-yard line is a place from which the Lions can score a touchdown, especially with all their two-point conversion tricks in the bag. But even there, I understood and understand how much bigger a three-possession lead is than a two-possession lead when a great offense is getting the ball right after halftime. As for the other two: On the first fourth-down attempt, the pass was dropped. That’s not something you plan for. On the second…
On the second fourth-down attempt—the one where Detroit could have tried to kick a 47-yard field goal (a 75% probability of conversion, and that might be generous)—the Lions would have only tied the game if they made the kick. They would have only tied the game against a team they hadn’t stopped all half. They would have only tied the game, halfway through the fourth quarter, against a team with a solid kicker of their own, one very capable of making a centered kick to win the game if the 49ers could eat enough clock (which again, they were showing they could do).
I know Dan Campbell wasn’t going primarily off of expected points or probabilities. I know it’s a psychological thing, and I find that psychological thing smart as well: Why not make your opponents know they always might have to play four downs, not three? Why not let your players know you’re always out for the kill shot? But looking at the points, being tied is not the same as having the lead. We’re going to repeat that.
Being tied is not the same as having the lead.
Being tied is not the same as having the lead.
We wrote about this on Tuesday, too. Not enough people understand that you only have a 50% chance of winning when tied, and that’s if you’re an equal to your opponent, which is debatable in the case of the Lions playing the Niners in California, about to give those Niners the ball back. Similarly, being up four points and forcing your opponent to try to score a touchdown is different from being up two or three, and allowing them to get something they want with a field goal.
Being tied is not the same as having the lead.
2. What happened to Lamar Jackson?
I know that Chiefs defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo gameplanned a great game. I get that piece of this. But man, Lamar Jackson struggled. The Ravens, who’d been the best team in the NFL, did not look it on the offensive side of the ball. It was better than it looked—they outgained the Chiefs, both in total and on a per-play basis—but that was not Lamar Jackson’s best game.
Part of what’s going on here is what we just talked about with Purdy: These guys are not the same caliber of player in every game, or on every play. We’re used to this in baseball and basketball. We’re used to hitters swinging and missing, pitchers making a bad pitch, and high-level shooters missing free throws. We don’t seem to comprehend it as much in football. A quarterback doesn’t play at the same level every single game, or every single play. Of course they don’t. They’re human beings.
3. The Niners are the best team left.
I think the narrative is overestimating Patrick Mahomes’s magic. The Chiefs are better than what they were, and they might be good enough and experienced enough and centered enough around their stars to do the NBA thing and become a different team in the playoffs. But the Niners are, looking over the course of the year and weighting some for recency, the better team. The Chiefs have a better best win. But the Niners are the better team. It should be a good one.
Let’s Talk About the WCC
Loyola Marymount announced late last week that it will eliminate six athletic programs at the end of this academic year, reducing its total number of sports sponsored from 20 to the D-I minimum of 14. On the men’s side, they’ll eliminate cross country, rowing, and track and field. On the women’s side, they’ll eliminate rowing, swimming, and track and field. Off the bat, there’s one logistical question: Why would they keep women’s cross country if you’re cutting track and field? Are those athletes supposed to compete unattached in track, or is LMU just sabotaging a low-scholarship program that’s going to nominally stick around?
Speaking more broadly: We’ve been warned this kind of thing is coming. We’ve known it’s on the radar at a lot of schools. The question is whether this is a natural bubble bursting or whether this is a product of more seminal changes in college athletics.
The first theory—that this is a natural bubble, experiencing some pops—goes like this: Most college sports don’t make schools any money. They don’t pay for themselves. Not in the direct way, at least. Athletics can be part of a school’s pitch to prospective students. Some athletes pay tuition. Conference membership can help a school’s brand. But most college sports are subsidized, and if you don’t have a donor ready to subsidize them, that’s coming out of money that could go elsewhere. Like businesses launching products, schools try to add sports and not every sport works. Like businesses maintaining products, sometimes the cost becomes too high and the sport becomes a drain on a school.
The second theory—that this is a result of athletics changing—has less to do with NIL and the transfer portal and more to do with potential changes in employment status for college athletes. The transfer portal is hardly any of it, except that it makes coaches’ jobs harder and thereby might drive up costs for coaches in the long run. The NIL piece is a little more significant, but not because of the present state of NIL. Rather, the NCAA’s proposed structure to save Division I from a likely split incentivizes schools to have fewer sports. Should a school decide to take the high-money route and put half their athletes in the “enhanced educational trust fund” category, having fewer athletes will make that half a smaller number. This, combined with the vague threat of all college athletes being classified as employees (unlikely nationally, but less unlikely in California), forces the issue.
With LMU:
I doubt LMU is looking to be a school in the high-money category of Division I, should the reform even take effect in its prescribed form (it’s still only a proposal). Reporting has held that not even every power conference school will want to take that route. LMU is a low-major, not a mid-major, by any coherent rubric. If LMU is opting into the high-money world, more of Division I is than isn’t. I do think, though, that LMU might be worried about the employment laws, and that LMU might be looking to cut costs more broadly (it doesn’t seem to be a big industry secret that a lot of WCC schools, as with many nationally, are struggling financially). I would also offer that college administrators don’t tend to have the most accurate read on the state of college sports. That was the theme of all the reports on the buildup to the Pac-12’s dissolution. Academics get promoted to administrative positions, and they outrank those who come up through athletics. Even athletics-trained professionals can have poor judgment on this stuff. With computer science PhD’s, it’s even worse.
So, if I had to guess, this will not be isolated. More schools will cut more sports. Others will add more, but the total number of sports being sponsored will likely drop. College athletics used to look a lot more like Division III, and unless we’re going to split Division I in half (an idea which infuriates many loyal to schools like LMU), this is going to be part of the deal. It really stinks. I don’t know how to change it. Isolated donors supporting individual athletic programs seems like the only way forward, and that’s hardly a national model for reform. The reasons it’s happening are all either natural or good, but collateral damage is inevitable.
While we’re on the topic of the WCC:
Washington State is having a great college basketball season. Kyle Smith has always been an exciting figure up there—he was great at San Francisco and has continuously knocked on the door of national relevance up in Pullman—but this team appears to be breaking through. We would estimate they’re slightly likelier to make the NCAA Tournament than miss it. Once there, anyone can make noise.
Notably, Washington State is about to join the WCC for two years in most sports. They’ll be effectively independent in football, nearly eliminating their path to the College Football Playoff and likely severely limiting their options for bowl games. In basketball, though, they’ll play in one of the better mid-major leagues (LMU might be a low-major, but Gonzaga and Saint Mary’s and Oregon State are not), making it not unrealistic that they could actually grow their program’s prestige through the transition downward. Considering the relative size of basketball rosters to football rosters, it would make a whole lot of sense for Washington State to pivot their NIL resources hard into basketball. It would be messy, and I know football’s the preferred sport, but even a few bigger NIL donors switching from a football focus to a basketball focus could pay off in a big way at that school.
Basically: The conventional wisdom says basketball is the route for WCC schools to establish some national power. Washington State is about to mostly be a WCC school. Washington State should focus on basketball.
The Rest
A little more college basketball:
- Great win for Iowa State. Kansas keeps hinting at maybe actually being a national title contender, but even if they’re not (which seems likelier—their topline players aren’t adding up, either because the depth isn’t there or because the players just aren’t fully clicking), it’s always good to win at home against a fellow Big 12 contender. With the other news: Jamie Pollard and T.J. Otzelberger have been confident enough in their denials of the reported K-State accusations (Jerome Tang reportedly privately accused Otzelberger of something like having managers spy on K-State’s huddle and text live updates to Iowa State’s bench) that I’m inclined to believe them. It’s something to keep an eye on, and it wouldn’t be shocking if someone in college basketball was doing this kind of thing, but it’s doubtful it’d be managers, who are easily identifiable if opponents do a little bit of prep work. Either way, the Cyclones are rolling. Big road trip coming up (Baylor on Saturday, Texas next Tuesday).
- UConn dominated Xavier yesterday, and I’m not sure there’s a better national title pick right now than the Huskies. They look better-rounded than Houston, and they don’t have the baggage of Purdue, which could be a big deal on the psychological side of a six-game series you have to win 6–0. Excited to see how Houston does at Texas tonight. They’re only 2–2 on the road this year.
Chicago, the Packers, we already talked about Iowa State:
- The Packers have reportedly offered Christian Parker the defensive coordinator job. The report is two days old, though, and there’s been little follow-up, which makes it uncertain. For whatever it ends up being worth, Parker is 32 years old and is coming off his third season as the Broncos’ defensive backs coach. He was a defensive assistant for the Packers in 2019 and 2020.
- The Bulls won in Portland but Patrick Williams hurt his foot and won’t play tomorrow night against the Raptors. For those wondering, Patrick Williams no longer leads the Bulls in +/–. It’s Terry Taylor now. Dalen Terry is still second.
- The Blackhawks were shutout by the Flames, making it zero goals in six periods during the Alberta leg of the road trip. The Hawks scored one in their first trip to Edmonton this year, so no dice on this being a scoreless season in that province. Maybe 2024 will be a scoreless year there, though.
- The Cubs signed Hector Neris, who like all relievers is a gamble. He’s a fairly well-priced gamble, though. You need some guys with that kind of track record, and the upside tends to be higher with them too.
