It wasn’t so long ago there were those among the fan base and the media openly wondering if giving Brock Purdy a five-year contract worth a maximum of $265 million was the right thing to do.
Those numbers continue to dwindle as Purdy gave a master class on how to play quarterback before a Monday Night Football national audience in a 48-27 road victory over the Indianapolis Colts.
The 49ers needed it too, because all the rumblings of Philip Rivers at age 44 being unable to throw the ball more than a few yards turned out to be fake news.
Rivers was good. Purdy was great. Probably as great as he’s ever been. Certainly the best he’s been this season. And he did it in a completely different style than his scramble-mode win over Tennessee the previous week.
This was Purdy at his dart-throwing best, completing 25 of 34 passes for 295 yards and five touchdowns, the first time any 49ers quarterback has ever done it on a Monday night and the first since Joe Montana in 1990 to do it in the regular season. (Steve Young had six in Super Bowl XXIX.)
“They had Philip Rivers and he gave them some momentum over there, so it was a huge win for us,” Purdy said.
Purdy, who had a head cold all week, was sniffling in between answers but clear of mind when it came to operating Kyle Shanahan’s offense and making all the right decisions.
He might have made just two questionable throws all night, and one of them is a nit-pick because it resulted in a 23-yard gain to Skyy Moore where if he’d led More further to the outside, it could have been a bigger play. The second was an overthrow to Kendrick Bourne late that was deflected off Bourne’s hands and intercepted by Cam Bynum when the game was decided.
“Got on him for a couple of missed throws but it was pretty close to a perfect game,” Shanahan said.
There you have it. Perfection doesn’t really exist in Shanahan’s mind, but in this case he was almost willing to make an exception.
The 49ers are on a five-game win streak and are 11-4. If they can beat two more playoff-bound teams, Chicago (11-4) and Seattle (12-3), they’ll be the No. 1 seed in the NFC, have a first-round bye and have a chance to play the Super Bowl in their home stadium on Feb. 8.
But this season’s 49ers team was lectured from the start to back off on the Super Bowl talk after last year’s 6-11 debacle and instead work on simply becoming a good team that gets better every week. The first time Shanahan even mentioned the playoffs was at a Sunday night meeting after the 49ers clinched a spot in what he calls “the tournament.”
Purdy is still thinking that way.
“We can’t get our minds wrapped around that,” Purdy said. “We have to handle business and play a really good team in Chicago next week at our place. We have to be locked in. We have to watch this film. We have to get better.”
To be fair, it wasn’t as if the Colts put a ton of pressure on Purdy, and their secondary is short cornerbacks Sauce Gardner and Charvarius Ward, so there was a fish-in-a-barrel element to his excellence.
But with Rivers (23-for-35, 277 yards, two touchdowns, one interception) surprising the 49ers by going downfield more than expected after playing it close to the vest against Seattle, Purdy had to be on top of his game.
His first game with five touchdown passes went to five different receivers — 22 yards to Demarcus Robinson, 2 yards to Christian McCaffrey, 11 yards to George Kittle, 3 yards to Jauan Jennings and 9 yards to McCaffrey. Their first eight drives were touchdown, touchdown, touchdown, field goal, missed field goal and touchdown.
They were excelling in every way, with the offensive line dominating and McCaffrey rushing for 117 yards on 21 carries and the 49ers getting 145 on 31 attempts overall.
Oh, and the missed field goal came from 64 yards just before halftime when Eddy Piñeiro hit the crossbar.
The 49ers even closed things out with a defensive score, as Dee Winters correctly read a Rivers pass, intercepted it an returned it 75 yards for a touchdown.
Before Purdy’s late interception, the 49ers had scored on 16 of 19 drives. Punter Thomas Morstead hasn’t been needed since at Nov. 30 win at Cleveland. The 49ers have run 152 offensive plays since then with Morstead a spectator.
None of that is part of the plan as much as it’s part of the Purdy process.
“I think it’s just putting pressure on myself,” Purdy said. “Every drive I got out there I’m like, ‘Hey, man, let’s go out and play one play at a time, and every play has a life of its own. It’s putting pressure on yourself to be detailed, to do the fundamentals right and living with that kind of mindset. Instead of just saying, `Let’s get into a rhythm here,’ it’s actually taking action in that.”
Purdy’s teammates have felt his confidence rise since coming back from a turf toe injury that cost him seven games and elevated Mac Jones to savior status as the NFL’s top backup.
“He’s resilient, and he has a certain peace about him now to where he can’t get rattled,” left tackle Trent Williams said at the ESPN post-game table with Scott Van Pelt. “He’s just really confident in his ability, really confident in his game it seeps out of his pores and the whole offense can feel it. He’s our leader and we follow him.”
Kittle, who had seven catches for 115 yards before leaving with an ankle injury (he says it’s not a dreaded “high” ankle sprain) liked the idea of Purdy playing a different style than he did the previous week and doing what it took to win.
“I think he’s operating at an incredibly high level,” Kittle said. “I mean, he did a lot less running around. He’s got a bunch of different elements to his game that allows him to be a really good quarterback. I told you guys we’re going to go as far as our offense takes us, and if our offense is putting up 40ish points and then we get a pick six at the end too, that’s really helpful.”
Purdy got a moment after the game was over to talk with Rivers and described it to ESPN.
“He’s a legend in the NFL, and for him to come back and rip it like he has and score a bunch of points, I told him it was an honor to be out on the field with him,” Purdy said.
On this night, Rivers could have said the same thing to Purdy. He was that good.