Getty Jalen Hurts throwing a pass against the San Francisco 49ers.
Though the San Francisco 49ers‘ season didn’t end the way fans would have liked, their starting quarterback from the NFC Championship game, Brock Purdy, has been earning rave reviews for his incredible efforts as a rookie, with Peter King comparing the 23-year-old to one of Super Bowl 57’s starting quarterbacks.
“He’s got so much in common with Jalen Hurts as a young player,” King said of Purdy in an interview with NBC Sports Bay Area’s Jennifer Lee Chan and Matt Maiocco.
“They don’t care what the outside world is thinking, saying whatever. They know that they’re really good, and they know that they’re going to play really well. I mean, that was the weird thing about Purdy that first day. He was really confident that he could play well.”
After flashing as a first-year starter in 2021, following some spot-up duty in 2020 as a foil to Carson Wentz, Hurts turned into an MVP candidate in 2022 while leading the Eagles to the best record in the NFL and Super Bowl 57. If Purdy is able to produce similar results in 2023 in his second year as a starter, the 49ers could be in a very good position to succeed long-term.
Peter King Recalls his Indifference to Tom Brady
Elsewhere in his conversation with Lee Chan and Maiocco, King recalled a conversation Purdy had before his first start as a pro against Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Despite being a 22-year-old rookie at the time, Purdy was rather indifferent to the prospects of facing the seven-time Super Bowl champion, likely because of his expansive experience in college.
“I got him for three or four questions after his press conference,” King continued. “And the last thing I said to him [was], ‘Hey, you’re starting your first game in the NFL next Sunday, and the other quarterback is Tom Brady. What do you think of that?’ And he goes, ‘Cool. He’s been playing football longer than I’ve been alive.'”
“I always thought that whether he was going to succeed or fail, the one thing that just absolutely stuck out to me from day one with Brock Purdy is that he started 48 games in a power five conference, got his ass kicked a lot, played in front of 100,000 people in Austin, Texas, played in front of 90,000 people in Norman, Oklahoma. As crazy as this sounds, it sounds crazy, but he was a lot more suited to play early in his NFL career than Trey Lance was just mentally.”
Despite his youth and inexperience at the NFL level, Purdy’s ability to lead the 49ers to an undefeated record in the regular season and a 2-1 record in the playoffs led many to highlight Mr. Irrelevant’s maturity. According to King, that maturity and competitive fire was there long before his on-field NFL success.
The San Francisco 49ers Quarterback is a true Competitor
On the field, Purdy is a fierce competitor, but that fire doesn’t just appear on game day. No, according to King, Purdy’s willingness to pursue winning extends to the practice field too, even when he was a lowly scout team quarterback tasked with servicing the starting defense.
“There was a story about a practice session where he really ticked off some guys on defense,” King said. “He’s the scout team quarterback, and he’s playing it like it’s the 7th game of the World Series instead of servicing the defense, which is what a scout team quarterback should be doing, and they were kind of getting ticked off at him, and he said, basically, ‘Stop me.'”
“And I think on a Wednesday in September, you probably want to wring the kid’s neck. On Wednesday in December, you say, ‘Hey, man, that was such a cool thing that he did back then,’ even though you probably hated him then.”
While players like Fred Warner may not have liked Purdy’s antics at the time, San Francisco’s middle linebacker has since become his starting quarterback’s biggest defender. Regardless of Purdy’s injury timeline moving forward, it’s clear his leadership and competitive fire are contagious.