Here’s what we have on the Quick Outs menu as we look back at Week 3:
- Brock Purdy’s passing chart in a shootout win over the Arizona Cardinals
- Minnesota Vikings defensive coordinator Brian Flores has reached a new level (again)
- How do the Dallas Cowboys stay explosive against two top defenses?
- Cleveland Browns defensive tackle Mason Graham is coming into his own as a pro
We’ll start in San Francisco:
QB charting: Brock Purdy
Everything I saw before charting Sunday’s Cardinals-San Francisco 49ers game led me to believe that Purdy throttled Arizona’s defense. He finished the day with 11.0 yards per attempt and didn’t throw a pick, as the 49ers hung nearly 40 points on the board.
In truth, Purdy’s performance was one of peaks and valleys.
Those peaks are amazing. He pinned a third-and-12 in-breaking route on Jordan Watkins earlier in the game. On his next pass attempt, Purdy stuck one of George Kittle’s numbers to get to the Cardinals’ 30-yard line. Purdy later converted a sweet third-and-2 from the half with a tight window throw to Kittle on an over-the-ball route, which led to a pass from the defender in the area.
Purdy also generally does well against the blitz. He consistently got the ball out before pass rushers arrived and avoided sacks when they did — he was sacked just once.
At the same time, Purdy got away with some throws.
Brock Purdy’s Week 3 numbers
| Comp | To | TD | INT | WR Adj | Pass the DEF | Throwaways | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Total accuracy | 16 | 27 | 4 | 1 | 3 | 5 | 2 |
Under pressure | 1 | 7 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
Out of pocket | 1 | 5 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
5-plus pass rushers | 5 | 7 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 |
Human range | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Zone coverage | 14 | 25 | 4 | 1 | 3 | 5 | 2 |
Tight-window throws | 6 | 13 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 5 | 0 |
Open-window throws | 10 | 12 | 3 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 |
An attempted jumping pass he made down the right sideline looked cool and almost completed, but it only happened because he missed an open Kittle underneath. With 2:14 left in the first quarter, Purdy threw an escort screen to Kaelon Black too late for what I saw, leading to an incompletion. Two minutes in, Cardinals safety Andrew Wingard dropped a gift interception on a middle-field throw to Mike Evans.
Purdy had five throws in total that were broken up by the defense. That’s a lot for one game.
None of this is unusual for Purdy and the 49ers. Most of Purdy’s games feature some anxiety-inducing incompletions surrounded by sharp decision-making and some nice throws to sched-open receivers down the field. It’s a tried and true formula that allows the 49ers to be one of the NFL’s most fearsome offenses, year after year.
Statistical analysis: The defensive success rate of the Minnesota Vikings
Flores has now called 54 games as the defensive coordinator of the Minnesota Vikings. Most of them have been good; many of them are great. And the game he called against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Sunday was the best of his tenure.
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According to TruMedia, the Vikings had an 81.2 percent defensive success rate against the Bucs — the highest mark for Flores’ defense during his time in Minnesota. It was also the only time his Vikings surpassed the 80 percent mark.
That performance is in rarified air around the league. Since Flores took the job with the Vikings in 2023, there have only been four other defensive performances with a success rate greater than 80 percent.
The 2023 Browns did it twice: Week 1 against the notoriously slow-starting Cincinnati Bengals and Week 9 against a Cardinals team with Clayton Tune at quarterback. In 2024, the Denver Broncos hit 80 percent while playing against the Kansas City Chiefs’ backups in Week 18, which almost didn’t count. Last season’s only game of this kind came when the Chiefs put the clamps on a lifeless Las Vegas Raiders team in Week 7.
By my count, the Browns’ blowout of the Bengals and the Chiefs’ blowout of the Raiders are the only “real” performances on that list, besides what Flores did to the Bucs. (The Browns-Bengals game was a little long because Week 1 is always weird and Joe Burrow wasn’t fully healthy.)
So, if this showing of the Bucs’ offense felt particularly sluggish and inconsistent – it was. Games like this don’t happen often, and Sunday was the ultimate testament to what a special defense Flores has built in Minnesota.
Anatomy of a play: CeeDee Lamb’s 49-yard catch vs. the Baltimore Ravens
Two-high coverage is all the rage right now. Quarters coverage (also called Cover 4) is particularly popular among the league’s best game callers, from Mike McDonald to Jesse Minter to Flores.
Although they are still trailing by the eight ball, offenses are starting to break the rules in the quarters to find explosive plays again. Many of them do this by taking the weak safety to “poach” the strength of the formation, in an effort to help clear out crosses and in-breakers. That action, in turn, leaves the backside cornerback alone on the field.
Certified offences man on the X receiver can catch explosive vertical shots. Enter Lamb and the Cowboys.
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Before the snap on the play above, the Cowboys moved a tight end from right to left to create a 2×2 formation, with two receivers and the running back to the right of the offense. That is the “strength” of the formation, as far as pass coverage is concerned. Defenses want to give more help to the side with faster receiver bodies.
On the snap, the left tight end immediately goes flat, allowing weakside safety Jaylinn Hawkins (No. 21) to turn his attention the other way to “poach” the two-receiver side. As a result, it’s Lamb versus Marlon Humphrey one-on-one on the left side. Lamb works inside leverage, rushes Humphrey’s pass and tracks a well-thrown ball from Dak Prescott over his shoulder to immediately flip the field.
In a world where it’s hard for offenses to generate explosive passes in the middle of the field, watch for teams trying to scheme their best wide receiver in these looks.
Needle-mover: Mason Graham
Graham’s rookie season was net neutral. His explosiveness and flexibility appeared in flashes, but he was a negative in the run game, and his overall impact on defense never stood out for long periods of time.
Three weeks into his second season, Graham looks more like the player Cleveland believed it would get if it spent a top-five pick on him.
Graham was in the backfield on the first play of the game against the Carolina Panthers — Carolina tried to run the duo off Graham’s sideline, but the young defensive tackle hit center Luke Fortner in the face to hide the running back at the line of scrimmage.
As the game wore on, Graham wreaked more havoc. He finished the day with seven total “stops” (tackles where the EPA lost the offense on the play), according to NextGenStats. Two of those are sacks; another was a fourth-quarter tackle for loss on Chuba Hubbard; he also has run stuff in the first playthrough of the game. Graham also finished with five quarterback pressures.
In the pass-rush department, it’s obvious how Graham fits in with teammate Jared Verse.
Verse is a crushing presence who walks tackles back to the quarterback. Graham’s more explosive, slippery style makes him the perfect clean-up sack-getter to pair with a brawler like that, and it’s exactly the formula that led to both of Graham’s sacks on Sunday.
If the Browns are going to trade Myles Garrett in the combined Verse and others, Graham needs to take a huge step forward. It’s like he just did that.