The NFL microscope isn’t fair. Before we get into the whole San Francisco 49ers injury crossroads — which is naturally going to put immense pressure on quarterback Brock Purdy — we have to be realistic about how some budding stars get digested by their critics.
For some, the expectations and pressure and blame just tends to loom larger. And you could argue that among the league’s successful young quarterbacks, it has loomed largest for Purdy. Among his peers, he often seems the quickest to get knocked, doubted, dismissed or have his accomplishments reduced to being the byproduct of someone or something else. Repeatedly, his victories or statistics have been framed as a creation of head coach Kyle Shanahan, or focused through the greatness or dominance of Christian McCaffrey, Deebo Samuel, George Kittle and others.
The driving force behind this perception is really not well concealed, either. Purdy is not classically large in frame when it comes to the statistical ideals at the quarterback position. His arm strength is not among the league’s best, and his creativity lags behind the out-of-structure-wunderkinds who can turn a wrong play into a right outcome. And of course, Purdy was selected with the last pick of the 2022 NFL Draft — which generates a subliminal and inaccurate perception that Purdy is overachieving as a player, rather than a more a reasonable assessment that NFL teams simply underachieved in their evaluations of him.
In the simplest of terms, this is how Purdy repeatedly gets slapped with the stubborn label of “system quarterback” — through a layered process of focusing on what he can’t do or hasn’t done, while turning his accomplishments into the happenstance of his surroundings. Again, it’s a microscope that’s not fair. But his critics really don’t care, either. Until Purdy does something to excel beyond the 49ers’ roster talent and coaching structure, the doubts and slights and dismissals will continue.
All of which brings us to this moment in the 2024 NFL season. And a situation that provides Purdy with an opportunity to start backing his doubters into a tight corner of their own construction. The third-year quarterback whose high level of play has often been written off as someone else’s work now finds himself more alone than anytime in his career. Wideout Deebo Samuel? Down for weeks with a calf strain. Running back Christian McCaffrey? Out potentially for months with Achilles tendinitis. Even tight end George Kittle is suddenly nursing a tight hamstring and missing practices this week, casting some doubt about his availability for Sunday’s game against the Los Angeles Rams.
The accurate descriptor for any NFL team losing this much offensive talent at one: disaster. For Purdy, it’s both opportunity and challenge. Because more than ever, the offensive burden falls on him now. After all, it has become an accepted thesis that the punch of Shanahan’s scheme isn’t quite the same without either Samuel or McCaffrey. But without both? It’s like Shanahan planned a dinner built around steak and potatoes and now suddenly has neither steak nor potatoes.
Naturally, the head coach and his quarterback have to press forward anyway, embracing the silver lining that has presented itself: One way or another, the 49ers are going to spend a sustained amount of time finding out if Purdy has the ability to elevate and possibly even carry San Francisco on his own. And in the process, they’ll provide some kind of demonstrable evidence to either proving or disproving the lingering criticisms about whether Purdy is a product of Shanahan’s system, or the taproot that anchors it.
It comes at a pivotal moment, too, with Purdy set to entering into contract extension negotiations this offseason. As it stands, he has one extremely cheap year left on his four-year rookie pact, paying him just over $1.1 million in 2025. Through this summer, sources in the organization repeatedly indicated to Yahoo Sports that Shanahan was already committed to extending Purdy with an elite-level quarterback deal. But the context of that happening was also under the presumption that the 49ers’ offense would stay healthy and Purdy would continue to showcase how well he fit inside it. What nobody could have predicted is what is happening now — an injury crossroads that is going to arm Shanahan with a new piece of information. Specifically, a window into how Purdy reacts to the challenge of implementing Shanahan’s orders with a lesser cast of characters.
Will Purdy’s performance impact his potential contract extension? In one sense, no, because it’s been fairly clear for more than a year that Shanahan is comfortable hitching his wagon to Purdy for the long term. But in another sense, Purdy could certainly impact exactly where that extension could land. If he struggles significantly, it could give the 49ers leverage to tinker with how far beyond the $50 million-per-season mark they are willing to go if. Conversely, if Purdy continues to play at a high level despite the skill position losses, he’s almost certain to become the league’s highest-paid player (at more than $60 million-per-season) when the two sides hammer out a deal.
Of course, that’s just the money component. I think there’s another very significant vantage in play here too. And that is Purdy’s desire to be seen as one of the best and most consistently dominant quarterbacks in the league. He verbalized that more than once in the offseason, and when I visited with him back in July, he relayed something interesting about his rationale for saying out loud that he wanted to be a dominant player: He wanted his teammates and people in the 49ers organization to recognize it … and he wanted the words to come from his own mouth.
In effect, he was announcing his intention to be great. Which can sound kind of cocky, but it’s a bridge that virtually all elite quarterbacks cross. Because at some point, you have to have to guts to lead with verbal intentions to be great, while also knowing those proclamations can never be taken back. You’re burning your ships and there’s no longer a point of return. The only path forward is toward what you want … and if you fail, you fail.
“The most important thing is, this organization, my teammates, my coaches and people here, that they hear it,” Purdy told me in July. “For the whole world to hear it, that is what it is. Because the world’s going to say this or that about you. But for me, the people that I go to war with in this organization, I think for them to hear me say my goals and my expectations and what my standard is, I think that is important.”
Well, now he’s at the next step. You can say it. But then you have to be it at the most critical moments. And there’s no better way to be it than to raise your level of play when the organization needs you the most. For the 1-1 49ers, that time is right now. It’s this week against the Rams and every week forward. In the face of the critics who have always expected less and credited the least, and beneath a microscope that has no interest in fairness.
More than any other moment in his young career, Purdy has his chance at a rebuttal. And if you’ve been listening this offseason, he’s been preparing for this closing argument for long, long time.