Ryan Clark pulls back curtain on ESPN’s Brock Purdy coverage: ‘I’m about to make a confession.’

Brock Purdy bowing out of the NFL MVP race with his play this season appears to have been a weight off Ryan Clark’s shoulders.

Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, Patrick Mahomes and Brock Purdy. One of these quarterbacks was not like the others this weekend during the Divisional Round of the NFL Playoffs. The easy answer is Josh Allen because he lost, but that’s not who Ryan Clark was talking about. Clark was talking about Purdy, prompting the following tweet.

Yo!! Watching this game with Allen & Mahomes, after Baltimore & Lamar yesterday makes me think… “How does Brock Purdy beat any of these dudes?”

— Ryan Clark (@Realrclark25) January 22, 2024

Monday morning on First Take, Clark was asked to address his concern for the San Francisco 49ers quarterback, and in doing so, he sort of pulled back the curtain on some of his previous praise for Purdy.

“The single hardest thing I had to do this year was act like Brock Purdy deserved to be in the conversations with (Josh Allen, Patrick Mahomes, and Lamar Jackson)” – Ryan Clark pic.twitter.com/yAwg2UxD4s

— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) January 22, 2024

“I’m about to make a confession,” Clark said. “The single hardest thing I had to do this year, was act like Brock Purdy deserved to be in the conversations with the other people in that tweet. Because he was playing extremely well…we had to continue to include him in conversations with the Lamar Jacksons. We had to continue to include him in conversations with the Josh Allens.

“Those things are not alike. Brock Purdy is a fine player. Brock Purdy can operate in Kyle Shanahan’s offense at an extremely efficient level. Brock Purdy doesn’t raise the level of play of anyone around him.”

Brock Purdy is not in the class of Josh Allen, and he certainly isn’t in the class of Lamar Jackson or Patrick Mahomes. But let’s go back about three months, to a time where Clark was dubbing Purdy “elite,” which we now know was the hardest thing the ESPN NFL analyst had to do during the season.

“Right now, Brock Purdy is probably gonna have a chance to be your MVP and your Super Bowl champion. And if that don’t make you elite, then nothing does,” Clark said in response to Shannon Sharpe claiming Purdy is a product of his system during an October episode of First Take.

The word “act” was sort of glaring from Clark’s latest opinion of Purdy. It’s one thing if Clark decided to change his stance on Purdy as the season went on, as many pundits did after the 49ers quarterback threw four interceptions against the Baltimore Ravens on Christmas night. But an act?

Obviously, First Take having a segment where Clark and Sharpe both agree ‘Purdy is not elite’ makes for a much less entertaining show than if they’re able to get on opposing sides of an argument. We get it, there is some dramatization and a performative nature to debate shows. But Clark almost sounded relieved that he didn’t have to make the “elite” argument about San Francisco’s quarterback again.

[First Take]