Few things remain in memory when you have years upon years of San Francisco 49ers seasons chiseled into your brain. Brock Purdy’s emergence is one of those things.
49ers general manager John Lynch and head coach Kyle Shanahan met with Tom Tolbert, in Tolbert’s backyard of all places, for the Tom Tolbert show. The entire show is worth a listen, but there was the question of Brock Purdy and just when the duo knew they had something special with him.
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Most fans didn’t get a glimpse of Purdy in the preseason, so the knowledge of the then-rookie quarterback was minimal. Obviously, Shanahan and Lynch got to see a lot more. It began with the 49ers giving Purdy a fourth-round grade, but waiting until the end of the draft, thinking no one else would take the quarterback. As you know, Purdy went with the final pick.
Lynch and Shanahan saw who they had when training camp began.
“There’s an old saying for guys that are on the fringe of the roster,” Lynch said. “Don’t count your reps, make your reps count.”
Purdy had roughly four reps per practice to make count. Lynch noted that the usual trend was for the quarterback to go through progressions and then check the ball down.
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“Not Brock,” Lynch said. “Brock was coming back, boom! Tight window. We were kind of looking at each other. Then we’re looking around and see Trent Williams looking at [George] Kittle.”
While Purdy impressed with his limited reps, neither Lynch nor Shanahan knew he’d be one of the most accurate and rapid-processing quarterbacks in the league months later.
It was on December 4, 2022, against the Miami Dolphins, that they concluded they had more than just a quarterback who could hold down the fort. In that game, the 49ers lost both starter Trey Lance and backup Jimmy Garoppolo for the season due to injuries. Purdy was thrust into the Dolphins game early with no preparation.
And this happened:
“They brought the kitchen sink to him,” Lynch said, recalling the game. “I’ll never forget the throw to Kittle. Brian Flores was the coordinator; he’s famous for coming at quarterbacks. He came at him and threw a little bang-eight to Kittle. It was a big-time throw.”
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“That night in bed,” Shanahan said. “To answer your question, that might have been the first time I was like, ‘We might have something special.’”
That play is nothing we haven’t gone over numerous times. We, along with every sports journalist analyzing Brock Purdy that day, broke it down when it happened, and we continue to reference it now. That play displayed that Brock Purdy could hang in the NFL; it was a rookie quarterback taking a vicious shot, and still getting the ball out to his tight end for a gain.
I asked a similar, but different question a couple of years ago, but framed it more as when you knew Purdy had the starting job. This was a team that had invested a ton of draft capital in Trey Lance and was going to go with the last pick of the 2022 draft? If you thought that Purdy won the starting job but was also special, more power to you. Special wasn’t a word I wanted to use after having seen so many debuts of quarterbacks lead to deep regressions—so call me skeptical.
Still, there’s always that play a week later against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers where Purdy threw a dime to Christian McCaffrey for a touchdown. The aftermath was Levi’s Stadium erupting into “Purdy!” chants. In hindsight, if that didn’t indicate he was special, I don’t know what does. And we saw some very impressive debuts from quarterbacks in red and gold —Jimmy Garoppolo, Nick Mullens, and Colin Kaepernick, to name a few—and we never heard a reaction like that.
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It was obvious that Brock Purdy won the starting job. To Shanahan and Lynch, it pretty much happened in the same game he was forced onto the field. They had more history of Purdy—dating back to training camp—that led them to the conclusion. Of course, after the Buccaneers game, the secret was out.
When did you think the 49ers didn’t just have a starting quarterback, but something special with Brock Purdy?
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