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The 49ers had just wrapped up a walkthrough at the team facility the day before their 2022 preseason opener against the Packers. Brock Purdy, at that point, was a seventh-round, third-string rookie. He wasn’t even backing up Trey Lance and Jimmy Garoppolo yet, with Garoppolo exiled to a side field as the team worked to trade him. It was actually Lance and Nate Sudfeld he was behind. As such, shots to show what he had came few and far between.
Yet, Purdy managed to figure out he was making an impression. He got confirmation of it walking back into the Niners’ building that August day, trailing first-team All-Pro linebacker Fred Warner and first-team All-Pro tackle Trent Williams.
“Man, I can’t wait to watch Purdy play tomorrow,” Warner said to Williams.
Neither knew the then 22-year-old was right behind them. Purdy simply overheard it—and won’t soon forget it.
“So I was getting some guys’ attention,” Purdy said Tuesday, leaning back on a leather couch in the bowels of Levi’s Stadium. “Like, O.K., I’m doing something right.”
It sure wasn’t the last time Purdy would do something right for the Niners in 2022. And the revelation that Warner happened upon through a couple of weeks of camp was just the beginning. By then, Purdy had already gone from the bubble to a near-sure bet to make the roster—he’d wind up beating out Sudfeld for that third spot—and was on his way, as we know now, to so much more. Meanwhile, Warner’s belief would become everyone’s belief.
Stan Szeto/USA TODAY Sports
A year later the Niners have a stacked roster, the NFL’s best in the opinion of many rival talent evaluators, and, implicitly, they’ve shown what they think of Purdy by handing him the keys to it without looking back.
Outside this building, there are a ton of questions about whether San Francisco has done enough to service the rest of a loaded team with the best option at the most important position on the field. Inside it, that doubt really doesn’t exist. In fact, if you ask those who work in Santa Clara, the idea that Purdy could be Kyle Shanahan’s guy for the next decade isn’t out of the question—which says plenty about where they stand.
“That’s a big statement, especially when you say a decade,” Shanahan said, from behind his desk Tuesday. “The games Brock played in, he played at as high a level as you could ask for, as consistent a level as you can ask for. Hell yeah, you can win with that and be very happy with that. That was [seven full] games, there’s a lot that goes into it, and we’ll see how it goes. I mean, we played good enough in those games to say we’re going with him this year.
“And to go with a guy for one year means you better believe that stuff.”
Especially when it’s this year in San Francisco, with the team squarely in a championship window. So whether America believes in Purdy or not doesn’t matter. Because the Niners do.
Our big camp swing is done, we’ve seen 18 teams, and accordingly, we’ve got plenty coming on the site this week.
• How the Raiders are carrying out a second phase of Josh McDaniels’s and Dave Ziegler’s plan to build the team.
• Khalil Mack’s quietly building toward what could be a monster bounceback year.
• Takeaways from another week of training camp, and the first full weekend of preseason games.
But we’re starting with Purdy, the Niners and where they can take things from here.
The first thing that stands out about Purdy, in talking with the now 23-year-old, is what he’s not. You knew coming here he’s not 6'5", or lightning fast, or rocket-armed. What you probably didn’t is how this particular underdog’s approach looks different, too.
You’d think with a player who was, more or less, to Iowa State what Michael Vick was to Virginia Tech, a four-year starter and three-time All–Big 12 pick who lasted until the final pick of the 2022 NFL draft, who wound up starting as a rookie and leading his team to a conference title game, there’d be a tendency to throw all that back in everyone’s face and wear the resulting chip on his shoulder like a badge of honor.
Tom Brady once did that. Aaron Rodgers, too. Purdy doesn’t. And won’t.
“I feel like I sort of understood where I was at,” Purdy says matter of factly, on teams passing on him. “My first two years in college, I came on the scene. Oh shoot, who’s this kid? Had a good sophomore year; I threw for a lot of yards, got talked about for the next year’s draft. COVID hit. Things, in terms of my body, I felt like I wasn’t in great shape, in terms of being a quarterback, being acrobatic. I just felt like I was strong. So my last two years in college, honestly, I felt like I was sort of stagnant in my play.
“I had a lot of reps, was in a lot of different situations with our team, but I just felt like I wasn’t able to take the next step from my sophomore year. So going into the draft, I understood it: This is just the reality of it. I didn’t put enough tape out there, in terms of being a top prospect. I understood the situation.”
For the uninitiated, Purdy threw for 2,750 yards, 19 touchdowns and a 142.1 rating as a junior, and 3,188 yards, another 19 touchdowns and a 149.0 rating as a senior. His junior year, the Cyclones had the best regular season in school history, made it to their first Big 12 title game and won the Fiesta Bowl. They beat Oklahoma and Texas, and Purdy was hailed as perhaps the most important player in the history of the program.
It's not a stretch to think most kids would come out of that experience feeling slighted by then becoming Mr. Irrelevant (the moniker for the last player picked in the draft). Instead, Purdy saw it as validation that the work he did preparing ahead of that draft was needed, work to, more or less, rebuild himself athletically, which doubled a tacit admission that he had a long way to go as a player.
Purdy worked to get bigger and stronger his last couple of years in school, and, by his own estimation, became less of the loose, fluid athlete and thrower he thought he was in his first two years starting. So in working with quarterback trainers Will Hewlett and Tom Gormley, coming out of the college season at 218 pounds, he drilled down on trying to feel like the player he was a couple of years earlier, even if the results of ’20 or ’21 didn’t indicate a sea change was needed.
“They got me down to like 208, 210, more flexible, different arm angles, better mechanics,” Purdy says. “So I became sort of like that young, fresh Brock from my freshman and sophomore year in college, where I was able to have more whip on the ball, because all that kind of stuff made me more efficient as a thrower. …
“I sort of understood that I needed to be better on tape.”
Still, the Niners liked what they saw on that tape. Purdy had an advocate in then area scout Steve Slowik (he’s now a pro scout for the Niners) and quarterbacks coach Brian Griese. More than the player, though, they liked the person they were evaluating—even before they knew how honest he was with himself about who he was and who he needed to be.
“[Slowik] went in there, and for two years he got a lot of it talking to [ISU coach] Matt Campbell,” GM John Lynch says. “Matt Campbell would say, ‘This guy changed our program.’ Everyone wants to know how Iowa State did it. Campbell, first of all, he’s a trusted source. When he tells you something, it’s proven true on his players, and he was just over the moon on him. And then Griese started Zooming him. [Assistant QBs coach Klay] Kubiak, too. We got really convicted.”
That, of course, was even with some of the obvious limitations.
“He’s a smaller guy. Where he played, I thought watching stuff at Iowa State, when you think of the wind there, the weather, and you watch his size, it’s not like the ball on tape was just looking like a first-round pick,” Shanahan says. “And then you look at his measurables and you start to think that way versus what you see, like, Man, this guy plays like a really good quarterback. We gave him a fourth-round grade.”
On Day 3 of the draft, Lynch and his staff were ready to sign Purdy as a college free agent, should he not get picked—knowing that quarterback wasn’t a huge need but figuring there was something worth taking a shot on with the guy who helped turn Iowa State into a giant slayer. Shanahan guessed Purdy would be gone in the sixth round. The Niners had three sixth-rounders. They didn’t take him. Purdy kept sliding.
That’s when Slowik’s and Griese’s belief started gnawing at Lynch. “Those guys were so convicted at the end,” he says. “Let’s not take a chance at free agency. Let’s just take him.”
Kyle Terada/USA TODAY Sports
It didn’t take long for Shanahan to get a handle on what he had.
“I just remember the first day I got out and saw him in rookie camp, to walk up and see him for the first time in person, yeah, his height, that was accurate. But to see his legs, to see his quads, he was built differently,” Shanahan says. “He looked like a 215-pound guy. He wasn’t a small guy, as much as I’d thought on tape. Then the first day he threw, it was like, All right, that’s more than I thought. There’s more zip there. That isn’t a third-string quarterback. He can play in this league. We’ll see how he is, but that’s a dude that’s much better than I thought.”
At the time, Shanahan didn’t know as much about the work that Purdy had done to unwind himself athletically. But, very clearly, it was paying off, in particular because it was being combined with the football intellect he developed starting 46 games and throwing 1,467 passes as a collegian.
“His mind could keep up with Kyle’s,” Lynch says.
“I was able to take that [work with Hewlett and Gormley], and obviously the brains I’ve been developing the last couple years in college, and then put it into Shanahan’s offense,” Purdy says, “and become who I am now.”
Really, everyone saw something just a little different than they had evaluating him months earlier. Where Shanahan noticed more raw arm strength and better body composition, Lynch was taken by what Purdy could do in situations where he wasn’t leaning on the coach’s scheme. “He made a lot of off-schedule plays,” he says. “You started to see that this guy is a better athlete than we all gave him credit for.”
Purdy knew he was capable of those things—Iowa State needed him to be a playmaker in games where they’d take down the Big 12’s bluebloods—and the extra work he’d done before the draft allowed him to translate that capability to the pros.
Which is where players such as Williams and Warner, guys who normally wouldn’t be watching third-teamers, started to take notice of the sawed-off rookie field general. Purdy, that low on the depth chart, would get, by Lynch’s estimation, only four to 10 reps per training camp practice. But the GM says, “It’s that old saying: Don’t count your reps. Make your reps count.”
Purdy did. He made tight-window throws. He checked the ball down. He was aggressive when it was called for. He managed all of it with a weird situation unfolding around him, with Garoppolo working to the side one minute, then back on the team on a reduced deal the next, after everyone figured he’d have long been offloaded, and Lance, a quarterback the team gave up a massive bounty for, set to be the new starter.
From there, things happened.
Lance broke his ankle in Week 2. The Niners stumbled offensively, with the 1–1 start leading into a 2–3 stretch under Garoppolo that left the team at 3–4. San Francisco then traded for Christian McCaffrey, the defense tightened, the offense coalesced behind their new (old) quarterback and the team rolled into Miami at 7–4, riding a four-game winning streak.
Four minutes into the game, Dolphins linebacker Jerome Baker came free off Garoppolo’s blindside and converged on the quarterback with Jaelan Phillips, with the two dragging him to the turf just as he’d planted his left foot in the grass. Garoppolo limped off in pain. Purdy trotted in off the bench. Then Miami DC Josh Boyer, an aggressive play-caller to begin with, did what the book would tell a coach to do.
“Right away, in that game, they came after him,” Shanahan says. “And he made some big-time throws. And then it was as if they backed off, because he showed he was gonna punish them if they kept playing that aggressive. Right away, it was like, Damn, this guy is pretty damn good.”
Purdy threw for 210 yards, two touchdowns and a pick, connecting on 25 of 37 throws that afternoon. The Niners won 33–17.
Shanahan has been around enough teams, and in enough NFL facilities, to know what the day after a quarterback injury can be like. Under any circumstance, the players feel bad for their teammate, and the Niners did in this case, of course. But there’s also often a separate cloud lingering the next morning, because of the lost hope and uncertainty that can be felt by the group as a whole. There was none of that in Santa Clara, Calif., on Dec. 5.
They loved Garoppolo. They believed in him. Just as clearly, they believed in Purdy, too.
That belief would be buoyed a week later, after he threw for 185 yards, two touchdowns and a 134.0 passer rating in a 35–7 win over Tom Brady’s Buccaneers. Afterward, San Francisco players learned that Purdy had broken his ribs in-game. The Niners were going to visit the archrival Seahawks four days later. Purdy’s status was up in the air. If he did play, it’d have to be without much physical work. It was, in so many ways, a real test—one he’d pass with flying colors, and 217 yards, two touchdowns and a 117.0 rating in a 21–13 win over the Seahawks.
Two weeks after that, the 49ers’ defense went through its worst outing of the year against the Raiders. But Purdy won the shootout in Las Vegas, bailing his teammates out and allaying any fears he couldn’t be more than a caretaker.
Slowly, surely, the quarterback was checking every box.
“It was how consistent he was, how much better he was getting,” Shanahan says. “The Thursday night game when he played with broken ribs, he couldn’t do much, and we still weren’t sure before the game whether he could even play or not. And to watch him do it under those circumstances, then to watch him vs. the Raiders, to go to overtime when our defense—and we had the No. 1 defense in the league, but that week, they didn’t play like it—to watch Brock carry our team was impressive.
“Just the way he was, and the way he was at practice every day, and the way he was in the meetings, it wasn’t just me he was giving confidence to,” the coach says. “It was our whole team.”
Shanahan then punctuated the point, adding, “That’s why we won so many in a row.”
By the time the Niners got to the NFC title game, their winning streak was up to 12, eight (if you include Miami) with Purdy as the quarterback. And it was there that magic carpet ride found its endpoint.
On San Francisco’s sixth offensive snap, a second-and-6 after the offense churned out two first downs, Eagles linebacker Haason Reddick came flying off the edge, turnstiling tight end Tyler Kroft and getting both arms up to strip the ball from Purdy’s right arm. But the turnover would turn out to be the least of San Francisco’s problems: Reddick’s reach had bent back Purdy’s arm as he wound up to throw.
“It was funny, I thought my arm hit somebody as I was coming through, like, Did I just hit someone’s helmet? Or, Did I just have a stinger?” Purdy recalls. “Then, I watched the film, no one was in front of me, my arm just got snapped back. It was just so violent, and I just remember all this electricity and fire shooting down my arm. And when I tried to throw, I was like, Something’s not right. When the doctors were feeling it, I’m pretty sure they had an idea. No one knew until we got an MRI the next day. But yeah, so much pain.”
Purdy did all he could to get back in the game: “I was taping my arm every which way, to see if something could help.” He waited 30 minutes to see whether it would calm down. It didn’t. The pain, both physical and mental, was miserable. Even in the moment, he knew dark days were ahead.
“You watch the film and, man, we were rolling those first couple plays, you just feel good about it,” he continues. “Those are the kinds of games you dream about being in growing up, you’re one game away from the Super Bowl, you’re in a hostile environment, I mean, I love playing in stuff like that. And then, boom, your arm gets snapped, and you gotta get surgery, and now the question is, are you gonna be back for the [next] season?”
You know the rest. The Niners sent veteran Josh Johnson in. He got hurt, too. The Eagles then ran away with the game and the NFC championship.
But Purdy had already put enough on his résumé. The Niners believe he’s the right guy to get them back there. They saw it in Miami, and in Seattle, and in Vegas, just as they have since Philly.
By the time he got hurt, the rookie was no longer a fill-in. If Purdy had stayed healthy, the Niners had advanced to the Super Bowl and Garoppolo had been cleared to return, that would’ve been proved.
Purdy was San Francisco’s starter. Garoppolo would have been his backup.
“That was never going to change,” Shanahan says. “It took about three games” for the coach to believe that his best option was the guy who started the year third string. And just as there was no question over whether Purdy would start the Super Bowl in that hypothetical, Shanahan left Philly pretty certain he had his guy for 2023.
“He’s been [the starter] since last year ended,” Shanahan says. “He was always clearly our starter, but there were so many questions about his injury, how he’d come back from it, that we didn’t even know if he’d be ready for this year, so we had to prepare for everything else. I mean, Trey was the guy we gave the keys to last year, so we were definitely excited to have him in a situation [to play], and we also didn’t know if Brock would be back, so we needed someone to come in and at least compete with Trey, and give us a chance, because Trey was hurt last year, and just got cleared before OTAs.
“That’s why we brought Sam [Darnold] in here. And those guys have been competing their butts off, and I feel great playing with those guys. But like I told them, like I’ve said to media, like I said to everyone since Day 1, based on what Brock did on tape last year, it’s hard to beat that out in practice.”
Shanahan then says, “He would have to melt in practice to lose it. And Brock’s too good of a player to melt in practice—and so are the other guys.”
Don’t believe it? Opposing coaches will tell you, too. According to a few I talked to, Shanahan’s confidence in Purdy was obvious in how he was calling those games. And when asked, Shanahan himself conceded it to be the truth. “Definitely,” he says. “I think you can see it change each week, I got a lot more comfortable, I realized how many plays he could make, and also felt good in how he protected the ball, so when we did get aggressive and things weren’t there, he didn’t throw picks. So I got more and more confidence with him.”
Purdy’s confidence in himself was a factor, too, and has been even more since he got hurt.
He snapped out of the darkness he found himself in after the injury quickly, in part thanks to that unique perspective he brings for a player his age. Just as he doesn’t carry a chip on his shoulder over his draft position, he doesn’t drag with him the burden of tying his worth to his last snap.
So where other players would be tormented, Purdy focused on getting healthy and making the best use of the time he had. The rest, he trusts, will take care of itself.
“I never wrote down all the guys that were taken before me. I never came in mad,” Purdy says. “More than anything, I was excited. I had an opportunity to prove to myself that I could play at this level, with this team. And I’ve been thankful more than anything. Honestly, it goes back to my identity, man. I’m not somebody who has football wrapped around my fingers 24/7 and it consumes my life. Yes, it’s what I do, I take pride in it, and how I work and what I believe in.
“At the end of the day, man, I’m human. I’m not gonna be able to play this sport forever. Like I said, I sort of just have it loosely held. Football is my thing right now, I’m gonna be all in on it. If it’s not to be, it’s not my identity, and it’s not life or death. If I get hurt and I have to do something else in my life, I’ll be happy with that, too. … This is where God has me.”
He says that, though, with a smirk on his face. He knows exactly what’s in front of him.
He’s the starter for a Super Bowl contender. If things break right, the reins could be taken off completely this week, making him a full go for the first time since surgery. He has a coaching staff and front office that think a lot more of him already than most people realize. And in case anyone needs clarification, he says, with authority, “Dude, I love this game.”
In other words, as he sees it, this is where he’s supposed to be.
The Niners now believe it, too. They may have gotten lucky, but Purdy’s success is no fluke.
“This is not to say Brock’s going to Canton, but Jimmy Johnson, you sit back and you listen to the speeches, and he presented Zach [Thomas],” says Lynch, who’d just gotten back from the Hall of Fame. “And he goes, If you wanna piss off Zach Thomas, call him an overachiever. He goes, Because he wasn’t the prototypical body and all that, people thought he was, but the guy’s a damn good athlete and a damn good football player. I think that’s where we’re at with Brock.
“He’s done it in a small sample size, but every indication is he’s the guy. He’s got it.”
Lynch and Shanahan are showing, too, they feel the same way Warner and Williams did a year ago, simply by putting Purdy behind the wheel of this freight train of a roster.
Clearly, they can’t wait to see him play either.
