The 49ers dodged several bullets with their injuries in their Week 3 win over the Arizona Cardinals.
Having lost defensive end Nick Bosa to a calf injury last week week — with the star pass rusher likely looking at around a month on the sideline — the 49ers saw several other key players go down in a 36-30 defeat of their division rivals on Sunday.
Mike Evans suffered a rib injury with two minutes left in the first half and was carted to the locker room, while the second half saw Trent Williams leave
the game with a stinger and Dre Greenlaw sustain a quad injury.
Yet the saving grace for the 49ers is that, following evaluation, none of those injuries are serious. Evans is day-t0-day with a rib strain, Williams should be ready by Thursday while Greenlaw will be managed throughout the week with a quad contusion.
Still, there is an obvious sense of deja vu around the 49ers amid their excellent start to the season. The Niners are winning games despite a remarkable amount of injury adversity, just as they did in 2025.
Yet with 16 players already on injured reserve, and with the 49ers electing not to put Bosa on IR in part because of concern about having enough spots to designate players to return, it is clear San Francisco is close to a tipping point with injuries.
It is not sustainable for the 49ers to continue suffering injuries so consistently and keep winning. With tough games against the Denver Broncos and Seattle Seahawks on the horizon, fortunes for this injury-ravaged roster may soon change, and the harsh reality is that — even with this impressive start — it is difficult to envisage a roster in this shape seriously contending for the Super Bowl.
In this situation last season, the 49ers’ decimated roster unsurprisingly hit a ceiling, and the result was 41-6 divisional round loss to the Seahawks that ended an admirable campaign.
Still, for as much as the sheer scale of the injuries has presented significant challenges for San Francisco, outside of Ricky Pearsall, the 49ers have yet to lose a member their roster who could be considered a blue-chip player for the season.
That is a crucial difference from 2025, when the 49ers lost Bosa and Fred Warner for the season within the first six weeks and also had to deal with a multi-week injury to quarterback Brock Purdy.
And, though their current form amid the injuries doesn’t seem sustainable, the 49ers have hope that it can continue because of the play that is being sustained by two critical components of the offense.
Purdy provides hope amid yet more adversity
That Purdy’s performance against the Cardinals was arguably his worst of the season so far speaks to how well he is playing.
Arizona succeeded in making life a lot more difficult for Purdy than either the Los Angeles Rams or Miami Dolphins did, and there were periods of the game in which the offense sputtered.
Purdy did not put up the spectacular completion percentage numbers that defined the first two weeks, but the final stat line still made for very impressive reading.
He completed only 55.6 percent of his passes against the Cardinals, but still threw for 297 yards and four touchdowns.
Through three games, Purdy boasts a completion percentage of 72.3, has 789 passing yards and leads the NFL with nine touchdown passes while throwing just one interception.
Purdy is also first in the NFL in success rate on passing plays (63.9%) and adjusted yards per attempt and adjusted net yards per attempt (both 11.1). He leads the NFL in passer rating (133.1) and QBR (93.8).
In terms of Expected Points Added, Purdy’s EPA per play of 0.59 over the first three weeks ranks first of any quarterback since 2016, per Sumer Sports.
Put simply, Purdy is playing at an MVP level right now, with his standard exemplified by three standout plays in Week 3. His 23-yard touchdown pass to Mike Evans was a superb demonstration of the accuracy that has played a substantial role in his high completion percentage, while the sequence that effectively ended the game as a contest was an encapsulation of the upside he possesses as an athlete.
Purdy was robbed of an early MVP moment when he saw a 35-yard scramble for a touchdown brought back because of what looked a harsh holding penalty against George Kittle. Two plays later, though, Purdy rolled out after a play-fake and found a wide-open Kittle for a 20-yard score to end Arizona’s comeback effort.
Asked if any quarterback is playing better than Purdy right now, Kyle Shanahan told his post-game press conference: “I’d be surprised, but I don’t study the other quarterbacks right now, so I don’t really know what anyone else is doing except for the guys that we go against.
“I don’t get to see any of that, but I think it’s really hard to play much better than he’s playing right now.”
All the numbers indicate you cannot play any better than Purdy is doing right now, but he is being supported by an offensive line that is doing an excellent job through three weeks.
Indeed, despite concerns about the makeup on the interior O-Line and the injury to Williams on Sunday, the 49ers have still yet to give up a sack.
Per Pro Football Reference, the 49ers have allowed a pressure rate of just 13.5%, the best in the NFL. Pressures and sacks are a quarterback and offensive line stat, and those hugely impressive numbers reflect a quarterback with an elite understanding of how to move in the pocket and an oft-maligned O-Line making huge strides.
The challenge for both Purdy and the O-Line is maintaining that kind of form as the difficulty level ramps up.
Of course, there are going to be some down weeks for Purdy and the offensive line is obviously not going to go the entire season without giving up a sack. But the level of play at the quarterback position and in the trenches are primary reasons for hope for the 49ers that this year could be different, and that the injuries don’t necessarily have to limit what they can achieve.
The defenses of both Denver and Seattle will severely test the 49ers up front and provide challenges to Purdy that he has yet to face through weeks.
If Purdy and the O-Line can rise to these forthcoming challenges and perform at somewhere close to the standard they have each produced so far, then that would provide cause for expectations to rise significantly.
San Francisco can’t afford for the injuries to keep piling up, and the 49ers desperately need Bosa back as soon as possible. But Purdy and those protecting him have to this point served as key differentiators from last season. As long as that remains the case, the 49ers have a chance of surviving their adversity and mounting a more serious challenge than their 2025 injuries allowed.
