Current narratives and money aside, one of the biggest draft hits in recent memory in the NFL was the San Francisco 49ers taking Brock Purdy with the final pick of the 2022 NFL Draft.
From being the final pick of the 2022 NFL Draft and competing for the No. 3 spot on the depth chart in his rookie offseason, Purdy has cemented himself as one of the NFL’s better quarterbacks. He secured a huge five-year, $265 million deal last offseason, keeping him as the 49ers’ signal-caller for the foreseeable future.
While Kyle Shanahan and John Lynch saw glimpses of Purdy’s potential early on as a rookie, they couldn’t have imagined him turning out to be this good after being a seventh-round pick. But his first NFL game with extended action was quite a memorable one, and it turned into quite the year for the 49ers back in 2022.
Back in Week 13 of the 2022 season, Purdy was thrust into action after a significant ankle injury to Jimmy Garoppolo, meaning the 49ers were down to their third quarterback despite holding a 7-4 record and being one of the NFL’s best teams at the time.
Well, Purdy played pretty darn solid in his first extended action, throwing for 210 yards, two touchdowns, and an interception, while leading the 49ers to a 33-17 win. Following that game, Shanahan’s mind was all over the place, given the quarterback injury situation, but that came to a pause after he re-evaluated Purdy’s performance from the game.
“That night in bed, to answer your question, that might’ve been the first time where I was like, ‘we might have something special’, because I was so sick,” Shanahan said on the Tom Tolbert Show. “I thought we had such a good team and Trey [Lance] was already on IR and then Jimmy [Garoppolo just broke his ankle].”
“I’m home that night, not even thinking about the game. [I was] just like how we’re down to our last quarterback. We have such a good team, and once I stopped thinking about it in bed, I was like ‘holy sh—, he played unbelievable tonight.’ He’s always been good in practice, but like, what he just came into, and some of the stuff [Brian] Flores put at him and the style of what he did was different. And I remember coming to work that Monday just like, ‘we got a shot. Doesn’t look like it, but we might be playing with our best guy now.’ And it showed. We didn’t lose a game after that until he tore his UCL in the NFC Championship.”
That was quite the run for the 49ers, which unfortunately went down in a major crash when Purdy suffered his injury. But that game against the Dolphins showed something different, and the 49ers went on a roll after that.
Fast forward several years, and the 49ers are rallying behind Purdy here in 2026, as they hope to finally get over the hump for a championship. But that game back in 2022 is always a fun one to reminisce upon, and it’s clear that it had a lasting impact on Shanahan.
