It was a tale of two halves for Brock Purdy in his playoff debut vs. the Seattle Seahawks.
Part of that was Purdy settling in and another part was the weather improving. Then there was head coach Kyle Shanahan making a change to take some pressure off his rookie. 49ers beat writer Eric Branch explained the tweak when he joined Murph & Mac on Tuesday morning.
“I did think it was interesting, I asked and others asked about his performance yesterday to Shanahan,” Branch said on KNBR. “And he said [Purdy] missed a couple throws and when you do that and they are obvious everyone thinks you’re playing poorly. So he was kind of dismissive of that.
“But the most interesting thing he said was that he wanted to kind of calm things down and slow things down. So, in the first drive of the third quarter — which was very successful — a 13-play, 75-yard touchdown drive. They called 10 runs and in the first half they had 30 plays and Shanahan called 20 passes. [The Seahawks] were going to gear up to stop [Christian] McCaffrey and they were going to unleash Purdy on them. And it was just kind of an acknowledgement where ‘we just kind of need to calm things down for our rookie.’”
Purdy finished the game with an incredible line of 18-for-30, 4 total touchdowns, 0 picks and a 131.5 QB rating, far better than any playoff performance from Jimmy Garoppolo. In the second half, Purdy showed off why he is more than just a game manager with elite weapons.
“His ability to escape and extend and go off-schedule, that’s really something, because there can be a tendency to look at what he’s doing, [and say] how hard can this be?” Branch said. “And there’s an element to that which is justified, but when you see him there’s an ability to paint outside the lines, and his feel for everything, there is something more to him than being Shanahan’s robot.”
The best example of this was actually on an incomplete pass late in the fourth quarter intended for Brandon Aiyuk.
“That incompletion was awesome,” Branch said about the play. “You don’t say that often. That was an 11-second scramble, to be able to escape, and then he capped it off by kind of ducking under a defender, and then as he’s being drilled in the ribs he throws an absolutely perfect pass to Aiyuk in the end zone, which he dropped.
“When you see just his feel, I think it has led me to believe that you can not just throw anyone in this offense and he’d be able to do it,” Branch concluded. “He does have some special qualities.”
Listen to the full interview below. You can listen to every KNBR interview on our podcast page at knbr.com/podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.
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