SANTA CLARA, Calif.—As usual, Brock Purdy’s expression after winning the biggest game of his life, setting the stage for the biggest game of his life, was that of a clean-cut, 24-year-old dude getting ready to walk his dog. Or to sell a whole-life policy. Or to do the dishes. A life task. Nothing more.
Of course it’s more, but sitting with him in an office across from the cigar-reeking Niners locker room, 90 minutes after 49ers 34, Lions 31, he did a very good job of being the blending-into-the-wallpaper fellow he’s been every day since he was the last pick in the 2022 draft, 21 months ago. This is precisely why coach Kyle Shanahan and his teammates love him. The media authorities see Purdy as limited (and that is putting it charitably). Shanahan views Purdy as a flat-liner who treats a crucial drive in the NFC title game the way he treats a play in a May minicamp practice. All reps are created equal. Sometimes his suck, as many of them did in the first half of this Super Bowl-elimination game.
Karma was up 24-7 after two quarters, and Purdy looked very much like the 262nd pick of the draft—tentative, jumpy, wrong-reading. When I went into the media men’s room at the half, one urinal-using press-box wag said, “Who’s got odds on the Niners’ opening-day quarterback next year—Purdy or Kirk Cousins?”
Then, as he always does, from high school in Arizona to 46 starts at Iowa State to an iffy prospect to even make the roster at 49ers’ camp in July 2022, Brock Purdy just went back out there and did his best. The chips would fall where they fell. After he led drives that ended field goal-touchdown-touchdown-field goal-touchdown and won the NFC Championship Sunday, Purdy was what I’d call happily and pragmatically blasé.
“Honestly, entering the second half, I felt like I have since I stepped into this role last year when Jimmy [Garoppolo] went down,” he told me. “How can I do my job really well for this team? That’s all I thought of then, and that’s all I thought tonight. I know I have a really good team around me. I have great play-calling. Great coach. Great organization. If I can just do my job well, everything will fall into place how it needs to.”
What no one figured was that Purdy, who in his 29 previous NFL games had never had a run longer than 17 yards, would have two drive-saving runs of 21 yards within 15 minutes in the second half.
“Competed his ass off,” Shanahan said. “He was the difference between us winning and losing.”
“He’s the reason we’re headed to the Super Bowl,” said tackle Trent Williams.
I reminded Purdy late Sunday night of when he realized 14 months ago that his first NFL start would be against Tom Brady, he said, “Cool. He’s been playing football longer than I’ve been alive.”
The man about to be under America’s sports/Taylor Swift microscope over the next 13 days actually did bite on this one. He’s a Mahomes fan. Super Bowl LVIII will be the experience of Brock Purdy’s lifetime.
“It’s gonna be sweet,” he said. “Very cool. Been watching that guy since I was in high school, really. The way he’s taken over the NFL, it’s been fun to watch. To have an opportunity to go up against him for a Super Bowl? Doesn’t get any better than that. Does it?”
No. No, it doesn’t.
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At halftime, with the Niners down 24-7, Shanahan said his players were “extremely pissed. It’s not just that we were down 17. It’s the way we were down.” The non-competitive way. The defense was getting steamrolled. “We weren’t going down like that,” Shanahan said.
One of the great sports-writing clichés is the inspiring halftime speech. Last week in Baltimore, Lamar Jackson giving an expletive-laced rant got a lot of credit for the Ravens blowing out Houston in the second half. More important, by far, is how the Ravens changed their offensive approach from a deep-looking passing game to calling more quick passes and runs, with Baltimore opening the second half on a 24-0 run to rout the Texans.
“What happened at halftime,” I asked Purdy, “with your season on the line?”
“So,” Purdy said, “Kyle’s writing up the plays that we’re going to start out with in the first drive of the second half. Everyone’s eating and drinking and refueling. There’s not much said. We’re just listening to the plays that he’s going to call and what he expects the defense to do. There’s so much experience and veteran leadership on this team where guys just know what their job is and what we have to do. There’s not a lot of ‘rah-rah’ or anything. Kyle said a couple things. Fred Warner said a couple things. Simple things. Offense, we need momentum. We need to get points up on the board, get first downs and convert third downs. Defense, get stops. Sure enough, we go out there and do that. That was it. Nothing more than that.”
So I’m an old man in this business, and many of the modern analytics fly over my head. But there is one thing I believe above almost all others: More than any metric or stat, a quarterback should be judged on how he plays in the biggest moments.
Purdy stunk in the first three quarters against Green Bay last week. He mostly stunk in the first half against Detroit Sunday. But in the important moments, here’s how he responded:
Last seven minutes against Green Bay, after trailing 21-17: Purdy completed 6 of 7 passes for 49 yards. Niners went 69 yards in 12 plays to beat the Packers 24-21.
Second half against Detroit, after trailing 24-7: Purdy accounted for 223 yards while leading San Francisco to a 24-0 second-half margin over the first 27 minutes of the half. After the break, he completed 13 of 16 for 174 yards and a touchdown, and ran four times for 49 yards.
Two playoff games. Purdy went 19 of 23 in those game-deciding stretches and totaled 284 passing-rushing yards.
Season on the line twice in eight days.
SANTA CLARA, CALIFORNIA - JANUARY 28: Brock Purdy #13 of the San Francisco 49ers runs with the ball during the third quarter against the Detroit Lions in the NFC Championship Game at Levi’s Stadium on January 28, 2024 in Santa Clara, California. (Photo by Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images)
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Purdy led a field-goal drive to start the second half, then caught a break with a ricochet bomb to Brandon Aiyuk, leading to a TD to make it 24-17. With five minutes left in the third quarter, on second-and-11 at the Detroit 25-, Purdy couldn’t find an open receiver. He ducked, plowed ahead, got out of traffic, and ran ahead. Keep in mind that in his 14 months as Niner QB, his longest run had been 17 yards. Here, his long run could have been a 25-yard TD—except he slammed into Deebo Samuel at the five- and went down four yards from the goal line. No matter. Christian McCaffrey tied the game with a plow-horse TD up the middle to tie it at 24.
Next series: Purdy escaped a sure sack and, throwing across his body, found Kyle Juszczyk for a toe-tapping, 10-yard sideline catch, and later scrambled for 10 yards on the way to a Jake Moody field goal. Niners, 27-24.
Next series: Third-and-4 at the Detroit 49- with 4:42 left. Crucial for Detroit to get a stop here, down three, and force San Francisco to punt. Purdy found no one to throw to, then took off, and one, two, three Lions dove at his heels and couldn’t stop him until he landed at the Lions’ 21-.
Fifteen minutes, 52 rushing yards. To keep three scoring drives alive.
“So, I’m trying to hit my receivers,” Purdy said. “That’s the point of playing quarterback. When they do a good job with the coverage or blitzes, then I see some space in that moment. In this game with the stakes what they’re at, being in the NFC Championship game it’s like ‘You gotta find a way, man.’ I know that I’m athletic enough to be able to move the chains and create some juice and momentum for our guys. That’s what I think I did in those moments. It wasn’t predetermined or anything. It was just on the fly. Honestly, I lowered my shoulder a couple times. I think it was good for our team. It was momentum, and we needed that.”
One of the great things about this Super Bowl—and there are many—is the David v Goliath quarterback matchup. The best player in football, Patrick Mahomes, against the lightning-rod, love-him-or-dis-him quarterback, Purdy. Football’s won in many different ways. Dan Marino and Dan Fouts won playing bombs-away football, but they never won a Super Bowl. Peyton Manning won with his relentlessness and his brain. Tom Brady and Mahomes have won with different skills and the kind of determination that will go down in sports history.
What’s Purdy? Other than an incredible story, I mean? He’s a player who isn’t the best at anything—other than taking what his coach asks and being superb at carrying it out. And that’s what great players do. They maximize their talent, they play their best when their best is required, they command trust. So, you can say Purdy is not in the same league with Mahomes, but he’s 21-5 as a starter in this league. And he’s in the Super Bowl now.
For the first time in four or five conversations with Purdy, I heard a bit of awe, a bit pf perspective, from this quarterback about what he’s done since lasting till Saturday night of the 2022 NFL Draft, when the only ones watching were Mel Kiper’s family.
“It’s been a roller coaster, really,” Purdy said, still in his football underclothes with an NFC Champs T-shirt Sunday night. “You finish your senior year in college. You get drafted last. Um, you think maybe there’s no shot to get drafted, then all of a sudden, there is.
“You make the team. You’re a backup. Then you’re getting thrown in. Then obviously you’re one win away from going to the Super Bowl your rookie year. You tear your arm. You go through the rehab process. You make it back.
“You go through some good times in the season. You go through some times that are tough, with the three losses we had in a row, and [four-interception] performance against Baltimore on Christmas Day. It’s a roller coaster, man. I’ve just tried to do my best to take it one day at a time and be where my feet are at, whether it’s going good or not. I’m not defined by my circumstances. More than anything, I just try to have a grateful mindset. That’s allowed me to enjoy this last year and a half.”
The wisdom of the young. Maybe that’s the best kind to have headed into a Super Bowl against the most experienced quarterback in the game. You get the feeling Purdy won’t be shaken by it.
Read more in Peter King’s full Football Morning in America column.