While San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy gets ready to make another Super Bowl run, memories of his team pursuing Tom Brady are still raw.
Niners head coach Kyle Shanahan considered the seven-time Super Bowl champion though Brady had retired in February 2023. That came amid Purdy’s season-ending elbow injury, which left doubts about his health for the 2023 season.
“How I took it was I understand. I was hurt, and there wasn’t really a certainty as to when exactly I’d be back,” Purdy said on the “The TK Show” on July 30. “Would I be back for the season? Would it be midway through the season? Who knows at that time? So, I totally understood the fact of Kyle and the team needed a quarterback for next season.”
“When he said ‘Tom Brady,’ I’m like, ‘Alright, that’s cool for your sake as a head coach and for a team to bring in the best of all time,'” Purdy continued. “A little bit of me was like, ‘Alright, well, I’d just proven that I beat this guy this past year and that I’m good enough to take our team to, at the time, it was the NFC Championship [Game].'”
Brock Purdy: ‘I Get it’
Purdy beat Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in December 2022, which aided the young quarterback’s rise to stardom. The former Iowa State star threw for 185 yards and two touchdowns in a 35-7 blowout as the 49ers spoiled Brady’s Bay Area homecoming.
“So there was a little bit to me where I was like, ‘I can obviously be the guy for this organization, so why not?’ But given the circumstances of me being hurt and having some certainty at quarterback, I understand why he was willing to have that as a thought. So I get it,” Purdy said.
“I think we were just having an honest conversation about the whole thing. I think when he was bringing that up it was before surgery,” Purdy continued. “It was before I even had surgery or anything, so we had no idea what my timeline was like or anything.”
“But yeah, there was the competitive side of it for me. I was like, ‘I just proved for eight, nine games that I can be the guy for this organization.’ But at the same time, I get they need a guy for next year if I wasn’t able to make it back in time,” Purdy concluded.
Purdy made it back in time and became an MVP candidate in the process amid 4,280 yards passing and 31 touchdowns.
Brock Purdy References Tom Brady in Pursuit of Greatness
Purdy acknowledges Brady’s greatness as an inspiration though the young quarterback didn’t want to see the GOAT in a Niners uniform on some level.
“With as good of a team that we have, I want to get to that point where we get to the third quarter, there’s a couple of drives that are crucial, I’m on top of my stuff, we convert on third downs, and we score touchdowns and the lead just gets out of hand,” Purdy told Michael Silver of the San Francisco Chronicle on July 27. “It’s having that Tom Brady kind of feeling. Late in the game, it always felt like Tom was just going to take over and not make it close. I feel like I can get to that.”
“I want to be dominant,” Purdy added. “Not just win games and feel like, ‘Eh.’ I want to be dominant with consistent decisions and feeling like we’re the top dogs every day.”
