Could 49ers’ Brock Purdy, Christian McCaffrey split the MVP? Analyzing their cases

There was finger-pointing among the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday. It involved two of their biggest stars, quarterback Brock Purdy and running back Christian McCaffrey.

“I think Christian should be MVP,” Purdy said after his team beat the Arizona Cardinals. “I really do believe that. He does everything for us. Runs the ball well, catches the ball. He does everything. So, in my eyes, that’s an MVP.”

A couple hours later, McCaffrey responded on social media.

“He’s wrong,” the running back wrote. “Brock should be the MVP.”

Purdy is the odds-on favorite at -225, according to the BetMGM, to win the Associated Press NFL MVP Award, which is determined after the regular season by the voting of 50 national media members. Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson, who visits Levi’s Stadium on Christmas night, is next up at +600. And McCaffrey is making his own compelling case, moving up to third on BetMGM’s odds at +700 as of Wednesday.

The past 10 MVP winners have been quarterbacks. That’s the longest streak for a position group in the history of the award, and it’s tied to the growing importance of the position within a sport that’s evolved to emphasize the passing game. But before this decade-long run, running backs also enjoyed time in the sun, winning the MVP seven times over the 20-season stretch between 1993 and 2012.

So, how does McCaffrey’s season statistically compare to the MVP campaigns of running backs over the past three decades? How does Purdy’s season compare to those of QBs who’ve won the award? And while there’s precedent for a co-MVP award (it’s happened twice since the 1970 NFL-AFL merger), what does history tell us about how voters might reconcile the fact that Purdy and McCaffrey play for the same offense?

McCaffrey’s growing statistical case

It’s a pass-happy era in the NFL, so McCaffrey’s rushing production stands out. His 1,292 rushing yards are good for a huge lead over the rest of the field. Buffalo Bills running back James Cook ranks second with 968 yards, an output that is only 75 percent of McCaffrey’s. On top of that, McCaffrey’s 509 receiving yards also lead the league at his position.

Let’s take McCaffrey’s paces, project them over the full regular season and compare them with the seven running backs who’ve won the MVP over the past 30 seasons.

*Indicates pace for this 17-game season. Other listed running backs played in 16-game seasons.

McCaffrey’s total yardage from scrimmage is on track to usurp that of two MVP winners above: The Dallas Cowboys’ Emmitt Smith in 1993 and the Seattle Seahawks’ Shaun Alexander in 2005.

Perhaps most notably, McCaffrey is on track to have similar production to that of the St. Louis Rams’ Marshall Faulk in 2000. Herein lie the most applicable parallels to the 49ers’ situation because those “Greatest Show on Turf” Rams — like these 49ers — featured legitimate MVP candidates at both quarterback and running back. In fact, Rams QB Kurt Warner won the award in 1999 and 2001, while Faulk — a dual-threat back whom McCaffrey grew up striving to emulate — brought home the hardware in 2000.

So while Faulk was the runner-up to Warner in 1999 and 2001, there is MVP-winning statistical precedent that fits well with McCaffrey’s 2023 resume.

Purdy’s meteoric surge in efficiency

Of course, none of the running backs above who won the award did so in a vacuum. Each one of them competed with quarterbacks who finished second in the MVP voting in those seasons. It stands to reason that the strength of any given quarterback’s season would directly affect any given running back’s chances of winning the award.

For simplicity’s sake, we’ll use adjusted net yards per attempt (ANY/A) to measure and represent efficiency of QB play. As you’ll see further below, ANY/A has been extremely correlated with the MVP award. The formula behind the stat combines yards per attempt, touchdowns, interceptions and even sacks.

All quarterbacks from those seven seasons were runners-up in the MVP voting except for Brett Favre, who split the MVP with Barry Sanders in 1997 after both players tied with 18 votes. All of the second-place QBs finished in the season’s top-three of ANY/A except for the Philadelphia Eagles’ Donovan McNabb, who finished 25th among qualifiers in that category — but still received 11 MVP votes behind Faulk’s 24 votes. That’s obviously a massive outlier, at least partly explained by the fact that McNabb led an Eagles team without a 1,000-yard receiver or a 1,000-yard rusher (McNabb led Philadelphia with 629 rushing yards) to an 11-5 record.

The highest ANY/A mark in that 2000 season, interestingly, belonged to Warner — who’d won the MVP in 1999 and who’d win it again in 2001. But Warner missed five games over the middle of the season with a broken hand, which helped open the door for Faulk to win. (Interestingly, 49ers QB Jeff Garcia led all QBs who started a full season in 2000 at 7.3 ANY/A, but he didn’t receive any MVP votes.)

The biggest takeaway, though, resides in the bottom row of that table: Purdy’s season has been vastly more efficient than that of all QB runners-up in seasons that saw running backs win the MVP.

In fact, Purdy is delivering the second-highest ANY/A ever, trailing only Peyton Manning’s 2004 mark for the Indianapolis Colts.

Quarterbacks shaded in grey won the MVP in that season.

The top ANY/A mark to lead the league in a season and miss out on the MVP belongs to the Minnesota Vikings’ Randall Cunningham, who finished at 8.5 ANY/A with 14 votes in 1998. Denver Broncos running back Terrell Davis won the award with 25 votes that season. Davis played for coach Mike Shanahan, whose son Kyle Shanahan is McCaffrey’s coach this season.

It’s impossible to statistically disentangle Purdy from McCaffrey because football is a team sport and the relationship between them — and the 49ers’ cadre of skill position weapons that also features receivers Deebo Samuel and Brandon Aiyuk and tight end George Kittle — is obviously reciprocally beneficial. And that’s why it’s imperative to appreciate just how collectively good the 49ers’ pass offense has been.

The chart above is based on expected points added (EPA) per dropback. What the 49ers are doing is historic. In fact, Purdy’s EPA per dropback is tied with the number that Aaron Rodgers put up in 2011 for the Green Bay Packers as the best mark from the past 15 years. That’s as far back as Ben Baldwin’s EPA database goes.

The 49ers also seem to have a real shot to become just the second team in NFL history to field a 4,000-yard passer, a 1,500-yard rusher and three 1,000-yard receivers. Only the 2004 Colts, featuring Manning’s NFL-record 9.8 ANY/A, have done that. Aiyuk already has 1,090 yards while Kittle and Samuel have 865 and 787 receiving yards on the season, respectively, for the 49ers. Their pursuit of the 1,000-yard mark will determine if Purdy’s 49ers join Manning’s Colts in that rarified air.

That superlative 2004 Indianapolis performance led to Manning not only winning the NFL MVP award but also the AP’s NFL Offensive Player of the Year Award — even though his teammate, running back Edgerrin James, amassed 2,303 yards from scrimmage that season. There’s undoubtedly been a slant toward quarterbacks in these awards for a long while. In 1987, even though 49ers receiver Jerry Rice scored an astounding 23 touchdowns in just 12 games during a season shortened by a players’ strike, Broncos quarterback John Elway won the MVP over Rice — whose candidacy was likely hurt because he split votes with 49ers QB Joe Montana (Elway, Rice and Montana finished with 36, 30 and 18 votes, respectively). Also, a pass catcher has never won the MVP award.

But Rice did win the Offensive Player of the Year Award in 1987, just like Faulk won it in 1999 and 2001 when he finished as the MVP runner-up behind his teammate, Warner.

That MVP and Offensive Player of the Year combination might be the likeliest outcome this season for Purdy and McCaffrey, a pair of teammates who are both primary drivers of such a high-flying 49ers offense.

And it must be noted that a tie for the MVP, as was the case in 1997 (between Favre and Sanders) and in 2003 (between Manning and Tennessee Titans QB Steve McNair) is also technically possible. It’s an unlikely outcome, of course, since it’d require an exact split of the vote between Purdy and McCaffrey.

But wouldn’t that be something?

(Top photo: Ryan Kang / Associated Press)

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