Who Should I Start? Brock Purdy or C.J. Stroud

Friday, August 28, 8:48 PM

San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy continues to rank as a fringe top-12 option in fantasy football, largely due to the support of the playmakers surrounding him. In addition to wide receivers Mike Evans and Deebo Samuel, Purdy will have the luxury of throwing the football to George Kittle and Christian McCaffrey, who are both among some of the league's best players at their respective positions. With a relatively similar-looking offense last year (other than Evans in place of Jauan Jennings and Ricky Pearsall), Purdy tallied 2,167 passing yards, 20 passing touchdowns, and 10 interceptions across nine games. The touchdown total was impressive, but managers will need him to clean up the turnovers going forward. The good news is that Purdy ranked as the overall QB5 in fantasy points per game in 2025, so a top-five finish is not completely out of the question if he's healthy for all 17 games in 2026. At the very least, he's in good shape to rank as a top-12 fantasy quarterback. As it stands, he has an ADP of 106.3, which corresponds to the ninth round and makes him the 13th quarterback off the board.