Brock Purdy Refuses To Remain Anonymous

This is not the Brock Purdy you think you know. The Brock Purdy you know is a featureless, personality-deficient cipher, and entirely a creation of Kyle Shanahan's everything-but-the-quarterback football philosophy. That there might also be another Brock Purdy in there is fun to think about, if that's what you're into, but in terms of Shanahan's scheme and the 49ers' broader designs, it is not really relevant.

But the scrambling, gambling quarterback who led the team to victory on Sunday is also Brock Purdy, as easily dismissible as you might think he is otherwise. Purdy is the ideal quarterback for Shanahan's teams, in that he is rarely required to be the hero in every win, and always required not to be the reason for a loss; a quarterback can make a nice living and win a lot of games playing like that, although it is also a sure ticket to Jared Goff-level uncoolness. Shanahan believes in the running game and defense as the building blocks of team success, and quarterback is merely an adjunct therein. Plus, Purdy looks like a guy who works the customer service desk at the auto parts store, and sounds like the next-door neighbor who helps you get your kid's ball out of the tree. His next interesting quote will give him an even one.

It was Stealth Purdy's work on Sunday night against the Chicago Bears, in what was by any standard a sensational game between two of the most surprising of the many surprising football teams this winter, that convinced many observer/blowhards that he is more than just a rigidly devoted avatar of Shanahan's risk-averse visions. In fact, Purdy has always been a bit of damp dynamite in drab clothing. He makes 49ers fans think not of how he helps make the engine run, but of how much more fun life would be if he were any other quarterback. But he also wins, which means they cannot hate him with the satisfying hatred that comes from watching this year's version of Geno Smith, even though, as a Raider, there is only so much Geno can do.

Purdy is not Hall of Fame candidate bait the way Trent Williams, Christian McCaffrey, George Kittle, or Fred Warner are. He is not paragon-of-the-art stuff like Josh Allen, Joe Burrow, or Patrick Mahomes, nor is he yesterday's-star-today's-scar like Tua Tagovailoa, Kyler Murray, or Justin Fields. He lacks the brand-new-car smell of Drake Maye, Jayden Daniels, and Caleb Williams, but neither is he running on fumes like Aaron Rodgers, Russell Wilson, or Kirk Cousins. He isn't even part of the we-might-have-been-wrong-about-this class like Trevor Lawrence, Dak Prescott, or Jalen Hurts. He is a hilarious hodgepodge of categories, as properly befits his entire career.

Purdy was the last pick in his draft class, a belated antidote to the Trey Lance debacle. He was of a cloth with Jimmy Garoppolo, whom Shanahan found, retooled for purpose, and eventually discarded. Purdy had no business being anything much more than a Saskatchewan Roughrider, except that he could do the basics and had an impish predilection for improvisation that Shanahan permitted and even nurtured as long as nothing bad happened as a result.

And so far, despite casting no noticeable shadow, Purdy has been more than up to the standard. The 49ers have won more than two-thirds of his starts, and average 28 points a game in those starts. Purdy has a slightly elevated interception rate to go with his 67 percent completion mark, and like many quarterbacks, has a slightly better opinion of his arm strength than maybe he should. In addition, this year's 49ers largely held serve while Purdy was out with an injury and replaced with defrocked Patriots quarterback Mac Jones. The notion that the 49ers were what they are with or without Purdy was sustained.

That view has changed with their current six-game winning streak, although the returns of McCaffrey, Kittle, and Williams has been given more weight than Purdy's. But off Sunday night's game, in which he threw for three scores and ran for two others, even beyond its inherent advantage as the last football thing anyone saw, Purdy is now perceived to be a positive boon at a position where most players are either active detriments to success, pending detriments to success, or about to get hurt because they do too much for too little reward. And that one manic scramble-turned-touchdown to a very open Kyle Juszczyk might be Purdy's reigning signature moment, the one thing that seems to change more opinions than the leaden weight of statistics. Nobody bought the notion of Brock Purdy as elite two years ago when the 49ers went 12-5 and he finished fourth in MVP voting; nobody will buy him as an MVP candidate now even though the statistics are relatively equal when pro-rated for the eight games he missed. This is as it should be.

But for all that, Purdy remains Shanahan's ideal quarterback because he isn't the team's most valuable player and isn't really meant to be. He's just one of the very few quarterbacks who does not give his coach agita by undoing the grand plan through either recklessness or physical shortcomings. He seems somehow to know, as he did last night, that sometimes scrambling backward is the best move, and that sometimes the pass can go to Juszczyk rather than McCaffrey.

The 49ers' system, you see, is malleable as long as it is never far from Purdy's mind. As long as he doesn't become intoxicated with the power of his newfound celebrity among the punditocracy and internetigentsia, he will be ideal for the 49ers in their current, Shanahan-brained iteration. In fact, it is well in keeping with his M.O. that Purdy's work last night probably did more for Shanahan's chances of being named Coach of the Year than Purdy's own award possibilities. But there is the Other Purdy in there, too, and he knows in the pit of his soul that the Juszczyk play and his role in it was fun as hell, and that the fact that he pulled it off in a big moment in a big game may change what people think of him as a quarterback. Or, at the very least, that they will think of him at all.