Sunday very easily could’ve been emotional for Brock Purdy.
He could’ve taken the early bus to Lincoln Financial Field and walked the grass a couple of hours before the game. He could’ve tried recounting tearing up his throwing elbow in last year’s NFC championship to get the memory rattled free before kickoff. He could’ve taken time to reflect on just how far he’d come in the 10 months since the injury.
The 23-year-old could’ve done all of those things, but he didn’t.
Because Sunday, for Purdy, wasn’t about last year for his team, so it wasn’t ever going to be about that personally, either.
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San Francisco’s game against the Eagles was about the future of the Niners, not about the past.
“It was Week 13 for me,” Purdy told me over the phone as he was getting ready to leave Philly. “I didn’t want to get too caught up in This is the revenge tour or anything like that. I wanted to go in and execute for my boys, and obviously win the game. We have a bunch of crucial games coming up to finish out the season. That’s where I was at. If I got caught up in I need to get my revenge on these guys, I don’t think I would have been as focused and as detailed as I needed to be.”
Whatever he did worked. Whatever the Niners did worked.
And when I say whatever San Francisco did worked, I mean just about everything.
The final from Philly was 42–19, and somehow that doesn’t fully illustrate just how thoroughly San Francisco thrashed an Eagles team that’d been borderline impossible to conquer over the past two months. The defending NFC champions had come back from halftime deficits in consecutive games against the Cowboys, Chiefs and Bills, with a quarterback playing at an MVP level, sturdy lines on both sides of the ball, and a cast of star skill guys on offense. They’d taken everyone’s best shot and knocked everyone out.
On this rainy afternoon, that script was flipped. The Niners withstood the early flurry, put a foot in the (muddy) ground, and made the Eagles look way worse than Philly made anyone else look this year. They ran for 146 yards. They threw for 310. They converted 72.7% of their third downs, harassed Jalen Hurts and pounded the Eagles into submission.
The Niners showed why so many rival coaches and scouts think there’s no better roster in the NFL. And, as Purdy said, it’s about where a team that’s been in three of the last four NFC title games goes next.
We’re 13 weeks into the season. And we’ve got plenty to get to. We’ll cover …
• Exactly what makes Tyreek Hill so uncoverable as the Dolphins’ star eyes the record book.
• How the Texans are becoming about more than just their spectacular rookie quarterback.
• The Lions’ banner draft class and their banner day in New Orleans.
You’ll find all that and more in the Ten Takeaways. But we’re starting in Philly, with a Niners team that might just be finding its stride.
So, about that first quarter …
The Niners were outgained 124 to minus-6, had no first downs to the Eagles’ seven, and were 0-of-2 on third down, while Philly was 4-of-6. Purdy entered the second quarter without a completion. Christian McCaffrey entered the second quarter without a carry. Deebo Samuel had the only offensive touch of substance, and he lost four yards on it.
Meanwhile, the Eagles had twin drives of a dozen plays that chewed up yardage, and clock, and ended in Jake Elliott chip shots to give the hosts a 6–0 lead.
“It was just getting in rhythm, man; we were trying to get some quick-game completions going,” says Purdy, of how the Niners tried early to neutralize the aggressive Philly front. “But, hey, they did a good job of just dropping in zone, tipping balls. After that, going into the third drive, we just needed a completion.”
That completion came on second-and-15 from the Niners’ 10—after a false start had pushed the offense back—on an out-breaking route to the left flat to Brandon Aiyuk for 12 yards, putting Purdy’s unit in a manageable third down. Six plays later, he connected with George Kittle, who raced 32 yards, and the Niners were off and running.
And the entire context of the afternoon had changed.
“[Kittle] was where he needed to be,” Purdy says. “For us to just see our guys move down the field like that, get some momentum, that’s all we needed to see.”
Indeed, San Francisco scored touchdowns on six consecutive possessions, starting at the beginning of the second quarter and ending with five minutes left in the game. The drives covered 450 yards in 47 plays—that’s an average drive of 75 yards over eight plays, with San Francisco eating up 9.6 yards per snap. When it started, the Niners were down, 6–0. When it ended, they were up, 42–19.
And with the exception of a garbage-time drive, the defense was almost as dominant, allowing just 85 yards and six first downs on the five possessions Philly had after its first two.
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Kittle wasn’t the only player who showed out Sunday. There were a lot of big plays from the Niners, especially from a star receiver.
Deebo Samuel was unstoppable. He caught a pass from Purdy on a crosser late in the third, muscling through diving linebacker Nicholas Morrow, then cut through the teeth of the Philly defense before carrying Darius Slay into the end zone to complete a 48-yard touchdown. He scored again on a screen in the fourth quarter from 46 yards out and had a rushing touchdown on an end-around from 12 yards.
“All you gotta do [is get him the ball], man,” Purdy says. “When they’re playing zone and you get Deebo the ball pretty early, he can find creases and avenues like no one else in the league. He’s good at improvising after the catch. Tonight, we saw that. It’s fun to watch. It’s a blessing to have him.”
They also got it from Christian McCaffrey and Trent Williams, with the former making a living running behind the latter, and into the second level of the Philly defense. McCaffrey had 93 yards and a touchdown on 17 carries in addition to another 40 yards on three catches.
The truth is he worked in tandem to get there with his all-world left tackle, as Kyle Shanahan and his staff ran to left, and ran to the left some more.
“Trent, he sets the edge, and Christian, when he first got here, he sort of had to learn how we run the ball and the track of the running back,” Purdy says. “Obviously when you have two of the best at those positions, it looks pretty effortless and easy.
“They did a great job of that tonight. We’ve seen that time and time again.”
And then, you have Aiyuk, and his diving touchdown that ignited the scoring for the Niners, and Jauan Jennings, who also scored, and Purdy himself, who finished 19-of-27 for 314 yards, four touchdowns, no picks and a 148.8 passer rating.
This would be where he could pound his chest a little—coming back to Philly, and playing the way he did less than a year after his arm surgery, and leaving with the NFL’s best passer rating (116.1) and completion percentage (70.2), fourth-most touchdown passes (23) and seventh-most passing yards (3,185)—and be totally justified in doing it.
Instead, he chose to look at what’s around him, with that wealth of talent giving him the chance to have a lot more days like this one.
“I’m definitely thankful for it all, man,” he says. “I don’t come into the building one day and think I’m the man, that I’ve done this or that. I have such a great supporting cast and a great system, great coaching, very thankful for all of it. I look around and I see other quarterbacks and their situations. To be here at this time with these guys, it’s very special. I’m always going to be appreciative of that.”
He also knows the best way to show his appreciation is to keep playing the way he did Sunday.
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Now, as much as he tried to take last year out of his own personal equation, that game was still there during the week for all of the Niners, as they studied last January’s loss ahead of this December rematch.
So the images of what that day was team-wise and individually for Purdy couldn’t be avoided completely. And while he could tuck all of that away pregame, he did allow for the idea postgame that maybe, somewhere down the line, he’ll be able to look at how he came back to the scene of the crime, and played like he did with a lot on the line.
It just hadn’t hit him yet.
“When you think about that game and you watch film, there’s always the what-ifs and what-could’ve-beens, if I’d have stayed healthy,” Purdy says. “The human nature side of it is, Man, I could have done something with that game. It is what it is. It happened. It hurt for all of us. To come into this game, same place, sort of like a prime-time game, the environment’s just breathing down your neck and then to be able to perform how we needed to perform and to throw the ball for a whole game, I’m just thankful for it, more than anything.
“Did it give me closure and all that kind of stuff? I don’t know. I guess I’ll still have to think about all of it. More than anything, we’ve got a game next week, too, so I don’t want to get stuck in all of this.”
And that brought him back, again, to the most exciting part of it.
He sees what you do—a Niners team that looked like a powerhouse in every way possible, one very capable of getting to a fourth NFC title game in five seasons, and even going two steps further this time around. A team that was as impressive Sunday as any team has been all year and, given the raw talent on the roster, could still have another gear it hasn’t yet hit.
“You watch games and you watch film and you’re like, Man, we could be better,” Purdy says. “Obviously, we win some games. Then, we win big, and it’s like, Dude, we can still take this to another level with all of us being on point. Tonight, I think we showed glimpses of it. We’d like to start off hot and get those first two drives back, but when everyone’s clicking, we’re a hard team to stop. That’s just being straight up. That’s not with any arrogance.
“That’s just the truth. We have so many playmakers. When everyone’s doing their part, making plays, getting the ball to them in space, it’s scary.”
In the end, for the point guard of this showtime attack, that’s what Sunday was really all about. And as San Francisco’s win over the Eagles vividly showed, this story isn’t close to being done yet.
