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Nick Wagoner, ESPN Staff Writer
SANTA CLARA, Calif. — As San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy went back and watched his performance in Saturday night’s playoff win against the Green Bay Packers, he wanted to understand why he struggled. He didn’t, however, want to dwell on it.
With the Detroit Lions coming to town for Sunday’s NFC Championship Game showdown, Purdy isn’t too worried about what’s happened in the recent — or distant — past.
“It doesn’t matter if you played good or bad, like I don’t take really any of that with you the next week,” Purdy said. “It’s a new game. It’s a new scheme. It’s a new environment. Everything about it is new. It’s almost like you’ve got to clean the slate, learn from the mistakes, build off of the good things that you’ve done … I think that’s where the great ones really separate themselves from the others.”
This week, Purdy is preparing for his second NFC Championship Game start. He’s doing so on the heels of a rain-soaked performance against the Packers in which he struggled for most of the game before authoring his first fourth-quarter, winning touchdown drive of the season.
Purdy said Wednesday that he made some decisions early in the game that made him a little tentative as the game went on. Most notably, his second pass was thrown right to Packers safety Darnell Savage. Savage didn’t haul it in, though, and the Niners avoided an interception that could have gone for a touchdown.
The takeaway for Purdy moving forward is to be more cognizant of taking checkdowns when the big play isn’t there. He acknowledged Wednesday that he probably was looking for the big play too often against Green Bay.
“I wouldn’t put it all on just Brock,” coach Kyle Shanahan said. “Brock did some really good things and that would’ve been impossible to win the game without him.”
Indeed, it wasn’t until the Niners’ winning drive that it clicked for Purdy. Despite an erratic performance in the rain through the first three-plus quarters, Purdy went 6-of-7 for 47 yards and had two carries for 11 yards to set up running back Christian McCaffrey‘s winning 6-yard touchdown run.
“That’s something that I have to be better at,” Purdy said. “That’s what I needed to do at the end of the game. I feel like we got to that point. I started doing that better. We were able to move the ball. So, that’s something that I learned for sure.”
Purdy’s late-game surge wasn’t enough for him to dodge another wave of criticism that has been lobbed his way. Still, as they have all season, the Niners continue to back their starting quarterback.
“I’m not really talking or focused on his critics,” receiver Brandon Aiyuk said. “I love playing football with him and he’s the reason I’m sitting here today feeling like I have an opportunity to play my best football because of a quarterback like him.”
For Purdy, this week represents something of a mulligan for the most difficult day of his young career. In last year’s NFC Championship Game, Purdy suffered a torn ulnar collateral ligament in his right (throwing) elbow in the first quarter of a 31-7 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles.
The injury knocked Purdy from the game and, when paired with fourth-string quarterback Josh Johnson’s concussion, left the 49ers without a healthy quarterback for most of the game. Purdy had surgery on the elbow in March and returned for training camp before starting the first 16 games of the season. He was a healthy scratch for Week 18 because the Niners had already clinched the NFC’s top seed.
Now, Purdy and the Niners are back on the NFC title game stage for the third time in as many years and fourth time in the past five seasons. According to Purdy, breaking through to the Super Bowl after losing the past two NFC championships is of more importance than trying to atone for last year’s abbreviated performance.
“This is obviously where we wanted to get to as a team,” Purdy said. “Obviously, I’m excited that we’re here. Last year is last year. That was its own game. It hasn’t been anything that has bled into this year or this game. This is the 49ers against the Lions now … Not thinking about last year or anything … Obviously I got hurt last year and it sucked. That was part of the game. Going into this game, I’m healthy, feel good. I think for all of us, we’re obviously hungry and want to get to the next game after. We’ve got to handle business, take it one play at a time and allow everything to happen for a reason.”
