Brock Purdy was ready for Tom Brady; now he’s ready to fulfill his 49ers destiny

SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Brock Purdy wants to get the first down. Win the game. Be there for his teammates. Stay focused. Answer questions in public as thoughtfully as possible, without giving up too much or bounding away into rhetorical extravagances. Then move on to the next play or game or interview or practice.

He’s reliably rational, unassuming and 100 percent focused on the immediate task at hand. He’s not emotionless, but you can’t always see the more colorful edges of his competitive drive. Except when he’s celebrating a big touchdown or fuming over a blown play, Purdy can at times seem like a quarterback cypher. Or a Kyle Shanahan robot.

But of course Purdy is also a ferocious competitor with an independent streak. He wouldn’t have come from the last pick of the 2022 draft to outlast and thoroughly outperform both Jimmy Garoppolo and Trey Lance on the 49ers if he wasn’t a fighter. Purdy wouldn’t have made it back from major elbow surgery last March, through  training camp last year and through the full season all the way into overtime in the Super Bowl, if he wasn’t stubborn and proud. And Purdy wouldn’t have shrugged about Kyle Shanahan’s attempt to sign Tom Brady in March 2023 — as Purdy was about to undergo that surgery — if he wasn’t so tough, so confident and so determined to win out, no matter what.

Back then, he was hurt. He had only a partial season of success under his belt. Nobody knew if he’d make it back for training camp or even Week 1 of the 2023 regular season. Shanahan only wanted to sign Brady for one year and give Purdy a full season to heal up and be ready to start in 2024. Purdy understood what Shanahan was doing. But when I asked him about the situation after practice on Monday, Purdy showed an illuminating bit of the edginess that is driving this.

“I totally understood the fact Kyle and the team needed a quarterback for the next season,” Purdy told me. “So when he said ‘Tom Brady,’ I was like, all right, that’s cool for your sake as a head coach, and for a team, to bring in the best of all time.

“But a little bit of me was like, all right, I’d just proven that I beat this guy this past year and that I’m good enough to take our team to, at the time, it was the NFC Championship (Game). You know, I can obviously be the guy for this organization. … But given the circumstances of me being hurt and having some uncertainty at quarterback, I understand why he was willing to have that as a thought.”

There’s the rationality. The calm logic. But also, the fire. Hey, remember when Purdy was a rookie getting his first NFL career start (replacing an injured Garoppolo, who months earlier had replaced an injured Lance) and beat Brady’s Buccaneers, 35-7? Yeah, Purdy remembers.

Another very important part in the most important relationship in 49ersland these days: Shanahan knew that Purdy was wise enough to understand the thinking behind it, but wasn’t thrilled by the attempt to sign Brady (who decided to retire instead). And the coach appreciated Purdy’s layered response. The fire, too. Last week, Shanahan told me the Brady chase was also a compliment to Purdy — he knew Purdy was strong enough to not get broken up by it, and Shanahan also was telling him that only the greatest QB of this era could be an alternative option.

“Yeah, I get it,” Purdy said. “(Shanahan) was saying, we’d bring him in and you could heal up and then learn from the best of all time and then be the guy to come in after. So I get the compliment of it, but at the same time, man, I’m ready to play right now and help this team win right now. So there’s two sides of it for sure.”

There are no layers or multiple sides necessary now. Last season, Purdy broke the franchise record for passing yards (4,280), led the league in passer rating (113.0), threw 31 touchdown passes and had the 49ers within a play or two of beating the Chiefs in Super Bowl 58. And this offseason, instead of going through a rigorous elbow rehabilitation, Purdy got married and threw himself into life as an established NFL QB1.

But Purdy now acknowledges that even though he made it back in time for the start of last year’s camp and played all through the season, he was still doing minor rehab on his elbow through the fall.

“I was just doing extra arm-care work on my arm,” Purdy said. “… Early on in the season I continued to (need) to work on my arm more and more for it to feel better. I think once we had that bye week (in Week 10, early November) and I let my arm rest for a week then I came back, that’s when I felt so much better. It was five, six months, seven months of just straight grind, rehab on my arm.”

Which, of course, makes you wonder what kind of numbers — and how many 49ers victories — Purdy and this offense can put together this season. Maybe enough to make those two more plays to win the Super Bowl of this era? Things have been a little off-kilter for the 49ers’ offense in the early stages of training camp, with Trent Williams holding out, Brandon Aiyuk holding in and the coaching staff making sure not to overwork key veterans Christian McCaffrey, George Kittle and Kyle Juszczyk.

But as 49ers management deals with these financial pressures and plans to extend this potential Super Bowl window into the late 2020s, most attention is on Purdy, the best QB of the Shanahan era, who is due for an immense raise next offseason. He’s making $985,000 this season. If Purdy’s 2024 performance is anything like 2023, he will get a deal worth as much or more than the $50-million-a-year-plus deals recently signed by Green Bay’s Jordan Love and Miami’s Tua Tagovailoa. That’s not life-changing money, coming from Purdy’s current salary slot. That’s everybody-in-your-family’s-lives-changing money.

“Obviously, yes, if you play good and you do it well for a long time, you get a reward for it and you get paid,” Purdy said. “Just the nature of the sport and the position I play, it is a little bit more than what others may make. But that is what it is. And that’ll come when it comes.

“But for me, going into Year 3, dude, I still feel young and I still feel like there’s growth for me, both physically and mentally and with this game and this offense. Shanahan and (QB coach Brian) Griese, continuing to learn from these guys. And I can’t let off the gas pedal just thinking … I’m possibly going to make money down the road if this all goes well. I have to be better today and that’s where my mindset’s at.”

Here are a few other highlights from our conversation:

• Will Purdy get more freedom to change pass protections or play calls now that he’s played and excelled in the Shanahan system for several seasons? Shanahan told me last week that every one of his QBs has had the right to change plays and protections at the line, but that the system is also designed to take care of these things relatively automatically. Purdy said he might do some changing, especially in late-game situations. But every Shanahan QB knows he’d better get it right when he does.

“There’s a fine line,” Purdy said. “I’m not going to walk out this year going, ‘All right, I’ve played enough football, I’m going to just start calling my own things and Kyle’s going to 100 percent trust me.’ No. I’ve still gotta learn and believe and trust that what he’s calling is right. And I’m going to play within that system and if I ever do see something, I can do it. But I’ve gotta be able to come back to the sideline and tell him why I did that.”

• When asked last week if there were specific plays he regretted from the Super Bowl, Purdy quickly mentioned one third-down incompletion under pressure near the end of regulation and the infamous tipped pass on third down on the 49ers’ only possession in overtime. I asked Purdy if going through those plays with Shanahan a few weeks later was painful at all.

“It hurt a little bit, because we all know the end result, which sort of sucked,” Purdy said. “But I think more than anything it was pretty encouraging just knowing that, man, that was my second year in the NFL, we were on the biggest stage and I could’ve done this better. Or the good plays. I did make those plays. Those are confidence boosters that I can continue to build off of. So it goes back and forth.

“To look at the big picture, I was playing in a Super Bowl this past year and coming off a UCL. There’s a lot of grinding and mental stuff I was going through last year, and to be able to learn from plays in the Super Bowl? That’s pretty special. Not a lot of guys get to experience that. Whether you did good or bad, there’s not a lot of guys that have gotten to that moment and have been able to learn from it. I’m very grateful I was able to go and play in those moments. And now I’ve gotta learn from it.”

• It’s natural, Purdy said, that he has taken on more of a leadership role as he goes into his second full season as the starting quarterback. His teammates have seen him in tough times. They’ve won with him.

“I think we need guys to be able to step up into roles and talk at certain points,” Purdy said. “But more than anything, go out and prove it by your play and your actions. You’ve got guys like George and Christian, Deebo (Samuel) … guys that are coming every day, doing the right things over and over. And you become a leader. You become a guy that guys look up to and look at when things get rough.

“So for me, going into Year 3, I’m ready for that role. It’s not like I’ve walked in and gone, ‘All right, Year 3, it’s my third year playing here, now this is my responsibility.’ No, it’s been something over time. I think I’ve earned the respect of the guys here by the things that I’ve done, just how I carry myself in a humble manner. It’s sort of just naturally come about.

“For me, it doesn’t mean change or be a rah-rah guy. But be myself and be that competitive guy by nature, and guys want to follow that and go to war with that.”

(Photo: AP Photo / Eakin Howard)