It’s Tuesday, and training camp is getting to the point where days are dragging—enough to tire guys, but not enough to feel like a preseason game is around the corner. It’s late in practice when the totality of that can set in.
So San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy is going to take his chances here.
After the ball is snapped, his protection breaks down and he flips his hips to avoid a rusher, only to be faced with another. At that point, he backpedals a few steps to create space and, off-balance a bit, launches a corner route 40 or 50 yards in the air downfield. The ball goes right through his receiver’s hands, and into the belly of a waiting safety.
It’ll go down as one of four interceptions Purdy threw during the session, and to get fixated on that would be missing the point. For one, the ball should’ve been caught. But even if that wasn’t the case, the third-year quarterback accomplished what he was trying to with the throw.
What might have looked like a rough practice to those who don’t have keycards to the practice facility adjacent to these fields really wasn’t one. In this setting, Purdy’s gathering information—on the offense, on his teammates, and on himself. And that throw, in particular, was made not to score a touchdown in training camp, but to test his own limits.
“A hundred percent,” Purdy says, a couple of hours later in an office inside Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif. “Rather than playing timid and just checking the ball down every time, even though that may be maybe the right read, and yes, I need to practice those things, there are some windows and opportunities where I just want to see what I can do. And, obviously, when you get in the season, there’s times where you can take a chance, there’s times when you shouldn’t and times you can get away with it, times you can’t.
“So, right now, practice, you can get away with it, because it’s practice. So now’s my time to learn. And take some opportunities.”
On this Tuesday, Purdy got a little better for it.
Just as important, the quarterback’s past the point where he has to prove himself to those around him at Niners camp like the seventh-round pick did two years ago. Purdy knows who he is as a quarterback. So do his coaches, starting with Kyle Shanahan. His teammates are well aware, too, even if those outside of here don’t believe it.
“People don’t give him as much credit as other quarterbacks because of how many other highly-touted players we have on the team,” All-Pro defensive end Nick Bosa says. “We wouldn’t be where we’re at without him. I think he’s a top-five quarterback in the league."
Purdy plans to show it over the next six months or so, regardless of whether people want to pay attention.
