Brock Purdy is a realist, but he’s also a competitor.
Purdy seemingly wasn’t caught off guard when 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan informed the young quarterback last year that San Francisco was going to pursue Tom Brady if he wanted to keep playing. After all, this was the greatest signal-caller of all time the Niners brass was talking about.
But Purdy wasn’t a totally unproven commodity at that juncture either. He led San Francisco to the 2023 NFC Championship Game, and had the Iowa State product not sustained a serious shoulder injury early against the Philadelphia Eagles, the 49ers might have ended up in Super Bowl LVII.
As such, Purdy balanced understanding with fierceness when Shanahan broke the Brady news to him.
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“I totally understood the fact Kyle and the team needed a quarterback for the next season,” Purdy told The Athletic’s Tim Kawakami. “So when he said ‘Tom Brady,’ I was like, all right, that’s cool for your sake as a head coach, …