Nine years ago, some were breathlessly reporting on the absence of training-camp interceptions by then-rookie quarterback Marcus Mariota. It was stupid.
Interceptions should happen during camp. As then-Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers explained it at the time, that’s when he tests the limits of his ability to trust his receivers to get the ball.
49ers quarterback Brock Purdy recently offered a similar explanation when addressing a recent rash of camp picks.
"[R]ight now is the time for us to go out and—you always hear the quarterback say experiment—but that’s really what it is,” Purdy said on KNBR. “Can I fit it in this window on this hitch? Can I look off Fred [Warner] or [Demetrius Flannigan-Fowles] or [De’Vondre Campbell] in a certain way and then make that throw backside? You’ve got to try it out. . . . [T]here’s a time and a place where I’m like, ‘Hey, you know what? This is practice, and I’m going to drop back and try this out.’ And then you figure out [whether] it could be a part of your game or not for the season.”
It’s trial and error. But he’s making a lot of errors when he’s trying something different. That’s the real concern; these experiments are blowing up in his face.
Chris Simms, in a Thursday visit to #PFTPM, agreed with the notion that, while there’s a reason in training camp to take chances, seven interceptions in the first two padded practices of training camp are just too damn many.
The performances could temper Purdy’s stated goal to be dominant this year. He’s like the golfer who has been generating solid scores by laying up and who shows up one day and decides he’s going to play Tiger Woods in his prime. And then, on the first two holes, he sprays every big swing into the water and the woods.
That doesn’t mean Purdy can’t be dominant. It does mean that, as there is for nearly every other human being on the planets, there are limits to his abilities. This week, he’s begun to figure out what they are.
It won’t keep him from being a damn good quarterback when it’s time to play the games that count. It could keep him from being dominant.