You know who we don’t talk about enough? Brock Purdy.
Just kidding! The final pick in the 2022 NFL draft who led the 49ers to the NFC championship game after taking over in Week 13 as the starting quarterback and going undefeated until he tore his UCL in his throwing elbow in the NFC title game was perhaps the biggest story in the NFL last season. His injured elbow and ensuing recovery have also been the team’s No. 1 headline throughout the offseason.
All of that makes it a little bit head-scratching that NFL Media’s Cynthia Frelund selected Purdy as the 49ers’ most ‘underappreciated’ player. It turns out ‘underappreciated’ is more subtle way of saying ‘underpaid.’
Frelund’s method for determining each NFL team’s most underappreciated player involves their impact on winning relative to their contract. Via NFL.com:
First, I calculate and then rank each player’s season-long contribution metric by team (win share). To sum it up without getting overly technical, the contribution metric (or win share) measures each player’s production during the previous season. The metric encompasses a value for every snap by each player and reveals each player’s contribution to the team’s overall win total. After making those calculations, I factor in each player’s salary by position (contract data via Over The Cap) to add some context around who was being “underappreciated.” I always try to give priority to players who have not switched teams in the current offseason (since it’s harder to be underappreciated by a team you haven’t played for yet), but that keeps getting harder to do, due to tons of free-agent movement. Then I weight players drafted in Round 2 or later who have been to no more than two Pro Bowls and aren’t in the top 10 at their position. That said, the most critical component to this entire method remains the contribution metric.
Frelund, an analytics guru for NFL.com, goes with a numbers-based approach instead of just…
..
