Shanahan explained why he’s been so excited with Brock Purdy since his first start
In football, the quarterback is assumed to be the leader of the team. That’s the player calling the plays in the huddle and making sure everybody is lined up correctly. But when your quarterback isn’t performing up to standards, his words go in one ear and out the other.
San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy came into a unique situation. He started his first game more than halfway through the season as a rookie on a team with Super Bowl expectations. Most first-year starters are walking into the huddle on four or five-win teams.
It didn’t take long for Purdy to impress, and that pace hasn’t slowed down. Head coach Kyle Shanahan has noticed Purdy having more command and believes it’s due to his teammates recognizing his play:
“I just think when you’ve done what you’ve done on the field, it’s always easier. I don’t care how you are, no matter what type of leader or how you want to command or demand things from people, if you haven’t had much success on the field, that doesn’t last very long. He did that as a rookie. But then he was so caught up just trying to come back from his injury. Now after having a second year in where he had an unbelievable year, he’s in a much more natural position to do it. I think he does do it naturally. But the team, based off of what he’s done, he’s earned their respect on the field, and they know him as a guy inside and out and no one respects anyone more as a person than how much they respect Brock.”
The players saw Purdy’s work ethic first-hand after his UCL surgery. We went from thinking, “Will the 49ers have to play the first month of the season with Sam Darnold or Trey Lance,” to Brock practicing on the first day of training camp.
Shanahan saw something in Purdy during his first start and has continued to be impressed with how his quarterback has handled himself ever since:
“I was so excited with how he did right away. Just when we got him on the field with his few reps and then what he did in his rookie year, it was so exciting. Watching him overcome injury was unbelievable last year. He’s got enough tape out there that everyone has a good grasp of what Brock is, and that’s a very good quarterback. The way he’s built, the way his mind works, the way he works at things, how humble he is, usually any one of those situations only gets better with reps and being in more situations.”
Shanahan continued, explaining how some players come off the sideline telling you what you want to hear without fully grasping the play. And how it’s not always a good idea to give a player every answer to every play-call. It’s a fascinating follow-up:
“Everyone wants to learn it or know it like the coach does, but the coaches only know it because we’ve been doing it for a long time, and we’d sit in that room in a chair with a slow-motion remote and get to go over stuff all the time. And players don’t get to do that all the time. They have to go work on being an athlete and doing stuff on the field. And it’s not just all the mind. They have to work on the physical aspect of the game. So you always hope that they can count on the coach to help bridge that gap. But especially with the quarterback, it’s always good to know a lot.
Sometimes knowing a lot doesn’t always help, you know too many of the what ifs. I have a scar on almost every single play, we’ve done it long enough. You give the quarterback all those scars that you have as a play caller, they might never throw the ball. ‘Watch out, this could happen, this could happen.’ So it’s kind of on a need-to-know basis, to help them be the most successful. But the more they play, the more they learn. Because eventually, you do need to know all that stuff and it’s about how you handle it and Brock has handled it very well.”
What we can take away from Shanahan’s responses is that Purdy absorbs the information Kyle throws at him in an ideal way. It’s also evident that the 49ers can continue to coach Brock without taking away what makes Brock, Brock.