It’s Tuesday, and training camp is getting to the point where days are dragging—enough to tire guys, but not enough to feel like a preseason game is around the corner. It’s late in practice when the totality of that can set in.
So San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy is going to take his chances here.
After the ball is snapped, his protection breaks down and he flips his hips to avoid a rusher, only to be faced with another. At that point, he backpedals a few steps to create space and, off-balance a bit, launches a corner route 40 or 50 yards in the air downfield. The ball goes right through his receiver’s hands, and into the belly of a waiting safety.
It’ll go down as one of four interceptions Purdy threw during the session, and to get fixated on that would be missing the point. For one, the ball should’ve been caught. But even if that wasn’t the case, the third-year quarterback accomplished what he was trying to with the throw.
What might have looked like a rough practice to those who don’t have keycards to the practice facility adjacent to these fields really wasn’t one. In this setting, Purdy’s gathering information—on the offense, on his teammates, and on himself. And that throw, in particular, was made not to score a touchdown in training camp, but to test his own limits.
“A hundred percent,” Purdy says, a couple of hours later in an office inside Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif. “Rather than playing timid and just checking the ball down every time, even though that may be maybe the right read, and yes, I need to practice those things, there are some windows and opportunities where I just want to see what I can do. And, obviously, when you get in the season, there’s times where you can take a chance, there’s times when you shouldn’t and times you can get away with it, times you can’t.
“So, right now, practice, you can get away with it, because it’s practice. So now’s my time to learn. And take some opportunities.”
On this Tuesday, Purdy got a little better for it.
Just as important, the quarterback’s past the point where he has to prove himself to those around him at Niners camp like the seventh-round pick did two years ago. Purdy knows who he is as a quarterback. So do his coaches, starting with Kyle Shanahan. His teammates are well aware, too, even if those outside of here don’t believe it.
“People don’t give him as much credit as other quarterbacks because of how many other highly-touted players we have on the team,” All-Pro defensive end Nick Bosa says. “We wouldn’t be where we’re at without him. I think he’s a top-five quarterback in the league."
Purdy plans to show it over the next six months or so, regardless of whether people want to pay attention.
We’re creeping into Week 3 of our training camp tour, and the takeaways are loaded with news and nuggets from the road …
• Sean Payton on the Denver Broncos quarterback derby, with updates on the situations surrounding the other five first-round quarterbacks as well.
• Notable plays, rookies and whispers I’ve heard over all that time on planes, rental cars, and checking into hotels.
• An update on a slimmed-down, locked-in Matthew Stafford going into his fourth year with the Los Angeles Rams.
But we’re starting with the reigning NFC champions, and the quarterback who looks ready to level up as the team reaches, again, for the Lombardi Trophy that’s eluded them over the past five years.
In the spring, the arched eyebrows on some throws and decisions Purdy made in practice weren’t coming from news personalities or overactive social media.
They were coming from Niners people.
This was Purdy’s first real, full offseason as an NFL quarterback. As a rookie, he came in midway through San Francisco’s spring program and, as a Day 3 pick, his reps were limited well into training camp. Last year, he missed all of the spring, and was eased back in during training camp, returning from March surgery to repair the UCL in his throwing elbow. So without proper context, it was easy for people there watching Purdy play to fall into a trap.
“To see him for all the OTAs, I didn’t think he had the best OTAs,” Shanahan says in his office before Tuesday’s practice. “It was cool, now that I’m here watching him—he was trying all this stuff that he didn’t do great on the cutups. He was really working through stuff. He’s doing things mechanically and with his feet that he’s never done before. When you do that, you’re not going to be as sharp. A lot of guys are like, F--k that, I got to look good in front of everybody. He’s comfortable in his own skin.
“You watched him for seven practices, and I remember some coaches being like, Is he a little off? I said, I know he looks like that, but he’s trying some s--t I’ve never seen him do and he’s still working through it.”
Therein lies the reality of the NFL offseason, where you can’t always trust what you see.
Guys at the bottom of the roster, where Purdy was two years ago, don’t have the luxury to spend spring and summer pulling new clubs out of the bag. Accordingly, in that situation, Purdy blew his teammates away in August 2022, to the point where the quarterback overheard linebacker Fred Warner say, “Man, I can’t wait to watch Purdy play tomorrow” to fellow All-Pro tackle Trent Williams before the team’s preseason opener that summer.
So, unshackled from having to turn the practice field into his own proving ground, he did what a lot of established quarterbacks do this time of year—he found holes in his game reviewing tape from last year, found a way to address those holes, and has spent a lot of time since learning how to fill those holes.
One of those holes after studying the 2023 season was in how his feet weren’t always matching up with how he was reading the field. He could then tie that to inconsistencies in how the Niners’ offense played and, rather than shirking responsibility for things that were surely about more than just his footwork, took it on himself to rewire that part of his game. Being conscious of it in the spring, before he could commit it to muscle memory, created some bumps.
“You take your drop and use your eyes and then your feet,” Purdy explains. “And when you hitch to a concept and it’s not there, you read with your feet. So then you go to your second option off your second hitch. It’s things like that. Anyways, we get to OTAs and the same sort of thing popped up. I’m getting off things too quick. I’m reading with my feet really fast. I just wasn’t in rhythm. And so we’ve seen on film. And then in OTAs, it’s like, Dude, you got to slow it down. And even if it’s a four-yard check down, let’s just work on it.
“And so we had to work on taking a five-[step drop] and a hitch nice and easy, throwing a four- or five-yard completion. And it sucked, but it was like, I have to learn the rhythm again.”
Shanahan, passing-game specialist Klay Kubiak and quarterbacks coach Brian Griese stuck with him on it. They knew Purdy, since coming in two years earlier, had been very focused on going where the offense took him, and playing by the book. Being able to fix the footwork piece—they trusted—would allow him to do that with better rhythm and pace, and in a far less robotic way. Spring gave him the foundation for it.
Then, between OTAs and training camp, he went to work with his throwing coach Will Hewlett and mechanics coach Tom Gormely, a group that also included Caleb Williams and Anthony Richardson.
“Once I got back to Florida, I got back to having a base, not being so bouncy and poppy,” he says. “I was actually reading things and being on time with my throws. So coming back here, I feel a lot better.”
Where that will benefit Purdy in 2024 is actually in an area you might not expect.
“It’s funny, people call me a system quarterback and a game manager and stuff,” he says. “But, honestly, I feel like I can be better at that. That’s, I think, what may be missing.”
That, in fact, is where the details with his feet come in.
The Shanahan offense—quarterbacks are taught—has answers for just about anything that could happen after the snap. That’s why having a swift processor at quarterback is so important to those that coach it—they want a guy who can get to the answer before a defensive end gets to them. Which is one reason why Purdy’s been such a good fit for the scheme over the past two years.
When a problem arose, as Purdy saw it, was when he would fall off the timing of the play, and his feet might be moving faster than his eyes or vice versa. So, to illustrate his own point, it could well be his eyes staying downfield on a receiver running to the post while his feet were telling him to go to a wide open back on a checkdown.
“There was sort of a bunch of examples with the choice route, is what we call it—it’s a back coming out of the backfield and then he chooses to break in or out, or a receiver running from the line of scrimmage,” he says. “There was a bunch of times where defenses are playing soft, and I should have just put it on [the back] and taken the six- to nine-yard gain. I’m looking down the field and I’m trying to force the big play, like a 20-yard completion or a 25-yard completion on the sideline, and I’m sitting there hitching, holding on to the ball.
“It’s like, Dude, take what they give you right in front of you and stay on the field.”
“Brock is exactly what you want to coach. He’s not sensitive. He’s truly comfortable with the truth. He allows you to coach him. He sees what’s wrong. You don’t have to sugarcoat it.” Kyle Shanahan
The more Purdy looked back at 2023, the more examples he found where his big-play hunting was short-circuiting drives, creating what he called “this little lull” for the offense.
It was a good reminder for the quarterback to utilize the talent he had around him. Experts wanted to criticize him for having Williams, Deebo Samuel, George Kittle, Brandon Aiyuk and Christian McCaffrey, so he had to maximize those guys. They wanted to call him a game manager, so it was his job to be the best one.
Only none of it was about responding to the criticism. It was about what he was seeing in assessing himself as brutally as any coach could.
“It came up earlier in the season against the Jaguars and a bunch of other teams, the Bengals,” he says. “It’s a theme that had come up a lot. And so when we got to that Packers game, it was like, Dude, we’re in the divisional round of the playoffs. We need to be playing our brand of football, not trying to force things to happen that aren’t there. … It’s little nitpicky stuff, but it makes a huge difference.”
It also underscored a bigger theme with Purdy as he worked through his first full offseason—his only concern was getting better, so he could give his teammates the best quarterback possible come September.
“Brock is exactly what you want to coach,” Shanahan says. “He’s not sensitive. He’s truly comfortable with the truth. He allows you to coach him. He sees what’s wrong. You don’t have to sugarcoat it. He’ll see it before you do. … Some guys can be more exhausting than others because I’m just trying to tell him one thing, but this is going to take 30 minutes because I got to beat around the bush so he can hear it the right way.
“It’s just dealing with humans. Some are good. Some are bad. Brock is unique in that way.”
That brand of self-awareness spills over into Purdy’s surroundings. He’s gonna be around a while, and probably as a much wealthier guy about a year from now. He trusts that what’s been built in San Francisco will last because, as he sees it, “Shanahan and (John) Lynch will continue to draft guys, and keep priming guys, so that this organization continues to have success down the road.”
At the same time, he knows the challenges ahead.
Aiyuk and Williams are away, waiting for upticks in pay. Williams and Kittle are in their 30s, and McCaffrey and Samuel have a lot of mileage on their bodies. So while he and Bosa might have more bites at the Lombardi apple as Niners, this particular group of players—some of whom have been around for four NFC title games and two Super Bowls—might be down to their last shot or two.
“We had the opportunity to win the Super Bowl, and it’s like, Dude, we got to finish,” Purdy says. “When I came back to camp, man, the older guys are ready to go. They didn’t come in tired, like Here’s another year. They came back like, This is the year. That’s the mindset. And, man, it’s gonna take what it takes. It’s never given to us. The older guys say it all the time. So I would say there’s more of a sense of urgency than there is pressure.”
Purdy has his regrets, too, from the Super Bowl—and they mostly relate back to the regrets from earlier in the season. As he explains it, the moments where “you could’ve moved the chains, you could’ve stayed on the field.”
So he addressed those with the urgency of the team’s older vets who might not have the chances he likely will after those guys are gone.
And with that, where his training camp interception tally might be used to create hysteria on a random Tuesday on X, the confidence those teammates have had in him has only grown. Asked how good he thinks Purdy can be, Bosa repeated himself.
“I would say he’s a top-five quarterback in the league,” he says.
There’s a good chance he’ll soon be paid like one.
For now, though, he’ll have to settle for those around him knowing he can be that guy, one who’s capable of elevating teammates when there’s less money to go around. He doesn’t have to be yet, of course. But listen to enough folks around here, and they’ll tell you he’s been playing that way for a while.
"He looked like he could be that in the seven games he played as a rookie,” Shanahan says. “We didn’t know when he’d be healthy [the] next year. It wasn’t guaranteed because of his injury, but that’s why I was confident to tell him, You’ve only played seven games. It’s not just that your stats were good. We watched the film. It looks how it does in practice. The only way you really won’t be the starter is if for some reason Tom Brady really wants to come. We could see that in the seven games
“Then you go to [2023], and what more validation do you need? The guy’s played at a high level. He’s done it consistently. He’s done it when playing with injuries. He’s done it when behind. He’s done it when ahead. He’s done it in playoff games. He’s shown that he’s a quarterback that you can win with. There’s not a ton in this world, but there’s a group of them. Where do you rank all those guys? That’s for you guys to decide.”
So just as Shanahan’s allowing for Purdy to take his chances in camp, the coach will take his chances going into a critical year with a guy the NFL overlooked three Aprils ago, and who so many others have overlooked since.
They know how good he already is. And based on how he approached this offseason, and practices like Tuesday, they know he’s got a great chance to be even better.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as 49ers’ Brock Purdy Is Planning to Put His Best ‘Feet’ Forward in 2024.
