Reddit post on Brock Purdy baits 49ers beat writer into brutal flub

David Lombardi, a 49ers beat reporter for The Athletic, posted twice on social media Tuesday night, trying to showcase how great Brock Purdy has been this season. Only problem: Not only does it appear that he ripped the graphic from a Redditor, but it also seems he regurgitated wildly inaccurate information on it.

Lombardi logged onto social media Wednesday night and continued his reputation as one of the most vocal Purdy supporters in NFL media. He quoted a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, from former backup quarterback Kurt Benkert that called Purdy a “modern day Drew Brees with more athleticism.”

Lombardi’s post went even further and read, “Brock Purdy is Drew Brees with Lamar Jackson’s 10-yard burst, which is exactly what Kyle Shanahan said he was looking for at the QB position in 2021: ‘You want to find Drew Brees who can move like Lamar Jackson.’”

The validity of that take can be debated, but the problem entered when Lombardi tried to defend his post with a follow-up. The reporter posted a chart that showed where Purdy’s combine measurables stood compared to other quarterbacks and added, “This is a spider chart that might be immortalized one day. It explains so much about the physical dimension Brock Purdy adds. At the single most important metric for QBs on here, Purdy is in the 95th percentile. Purdy’s 10-yard split: 1.55. Lamar Jackson’s 10-yard split: 1.54.”

To anyone who has regularly seen both of the aforementioned quarterbacks play, the comparison seems almost too good to be true. As it turns out, it was. 

The post was factually incorrect with regards to the Ravens quarterback. Jackson famously never ran a 40-yard dash — the first 10 yards of which are used to measure 10-yard splits — at the combine or his pro day. The number appears to have come from an article from Bleacher Report that appears when someone searches “Lamar Jackson 10-yard split” on Google with the headline “Combine Notebook: Lamar Jackson Is a Quarterback. Period.”

What appears under the headline is a preview of the article that reads, “His 10-yard split of 1.54 seconds was comparable to the combine result for skinny Buccaneers receiver DeSean Jackson.” However, if one were to click on that article, it would be clear that that sentence is about Saquon Barkley.

Here’s the sentence in context: “Saquon Barkley tore up his workouts on Friday.

“Barkley ran a 4.40-second 40 at 233 pounds. His 10-yard split of 1.54 seconds was comparable to the combine result for skinny Buccaneers receiver DeSean Jackson. Barkley’s vertical leap of 41 inches would be excellent for a 210-pound featured receiver. His 29 reps on the bench would put many offensive linemen to shame.”

It would be one thing for a veteran reporter to MrSugarPenis his research to make a point about Purdy’s speed that is, quite frankly, not horribly off-base. As others have noted, Purdy’s speed in short yardage situations is still pretty impressive. It has become another thing entirely since it seemed clearly ripped from an old Reddit post.

As Steelers writer Nick Martin discovered, someone behind a now-deleted Reddit account posted the exact same spider graph on the 49ers’ subreddit 11 months ago. The title of the post included the same statistical mistake that Lombardi made and read, “Brock Purdy’s 10-yard split is in the top 5% of all QBs at 1.55, the same as Christian McCaffrey. Lamar Jackson comes in at 1.54.” Martin also noted that Lombardi used the same adjective, “immortalized,” to describe the graph as the second-highest comment on that Reddit post.

Lombardi at some point deleted both his original post and the follow-up, but is at least somewhat aware of his mistake, providing a defense of his take Thursday morning in the same thread as one of his deleted posts.

Since then, he has returned to regularly scheduled reporting news from Kyle Shanahan’s presser later in the day. Lombardi declined to comment to SFGATE when asked about the deleted posts.

Purdy’s MVP case still has three more weeks before a panel of voters have to decide whether it’s legitimate or not. While many factors will come into play between his own statistics, his highlights, his teammates and even his coach, one thing that certainly won’t be factored in is whether he’s faster than Jackson, his upcoming Week 16 opponent.