SANTA CLARA — It’s a whole new ballgame for Brock Purdy, who through good fortune and the final pick in the 2022 NFL Draft stepped into a near-perfect situation with the 49ers and surpassed all expectations.
About the same time Purdy was coming out of nowhere as a rookie, Caleb Williams was winning the Heisman Trophy at USC and a year away from being the No. 1 pick in the 2024 draft by the Chicago Bears.
All Purdy did was take his the 49ers to consecutive NFC Championship Games, tearing a ligament in his elbow as a rookie and winning two come-from-behind playoff games before acquitting himself well in Super Bowl LVIII only to fall victim to Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs.
The only step remaining was going back to the Super Bowl and winning it, a goal for which the 49ers are near-impossible longshots with a 5-7 record in a season gone horribly wrong.
Williams, meanwhile, as the consensus top draft pick, was so enticing the Bears traded their previous quarterback of the future in Justin Fields. The same Fields the 49ers bypassed in 2021 to select Trey Lance.
Purdy bailed the 49ers out on the Lance mistake, but 2024 has turned into character-building exercises for two of the NFL’s top young quarterbacks, with the Bears at 4-8 heading into Sunday’s game against the 49ers at Levi’s Stadium.
A year after one of the best statistical seasons any 49ers quarterback has ever had (69.4 completion percentage, 4,281 yards, 31 touchdowns, 11 interceptions and a 113.0 passer rating), Purdy’s numbers are more middle of the pack. He’s completing 65.1 percent of his passes for 2,707 yards, 13 touchdowns, eight interceptions and a 94.8 rating.
Shorn of some of the 49ers’ key weapons in wide receiver Brandon Aiyuk and running back Christian McCaffrey, and with Deebo Samuel having a subpar season, Purdy remains the likely 49ers’ quarterback of the future and is due a huge contract extension in the offseason.
Yet Purdy is being tested though in a way that didn’t happen his first two seasons, and a faceplant over the last five games could alter the course of his future and that of the franchise.
Over the last three losses, Purdy missed a key throw in the fourth quarter that enabled Seattle to embark on a game-winning drive. Sat out a 38-10 loss to Green Bay with a sore shoulder that may have impacted that throw. Looked lost in the snow in a 35-10 loss to Buffalo with the indignity of losing a fumble when the ball slipped out of his hand while attempting to pass.
It’s an entirely different vibe, and one that Purdy patiently explained on Friday.
“If you’re on a team where everything’s good and you’re winning games and you know you have some room to honestly fail, I feel that’s just a little bit different,” Purdy said. “Right now, the sense of urgency has got to be higher and it’s got to be on all the time. We have no room to really slip up right now.”
In his third season at age 24, Purdy has morphed from a nondescript afterthought draft choice to an unquestioned leader. He spoke of the challenge in front of the 49ers as one that will reveal their essence and said of his own responsibility for restoring the operation to its past form “I think I’m the guy for that.”
Caleb Williams (18) looks to pass for the Bears in a game against the Green Bay Packers on Nov. 17. Getty Images
Williams, on the other hand, is a rookie still learning to be a leader. Since the Bears traded with Carolina to get the top pick, acquired wide receiver D.J. Moore and drafted speedy receiver Rome Odunze with a subsequent first-round pick, Williams wasn’t expected to need training wheels.
But the Bears struggled on offense, and Williams has spent his rookie season being outshined by two other first-round draft picks in Washington’s Jayden Daniels (No. 2 overall) and Denver Bo Nix (No. 12) putting teams in playoff position.
While Purdy came to a stable, loaded team coached by Kyle Shanahan and watched as an anonymous reserve as first Lance, and then Jimmy Garoppolo, went down with injuries, Williams was expected to produce immediately in a new offense under coach Matt Eberflus as installed by a new coordinator in Shane Waldron.
Waldron was fired nine games into the season. Then Eberflus was fired after a Thanksgiving Day loss to Detroit in which Williams let the clock expire with Chicago in field goal range, showing no sense of urgency to the ticking clock.
Thomas Brown, who replaced Waldron as the play-caller, is now the interim head coach and will remain the play-caller. There’s nothing in any NFL handbook that would suggest coaching upheaval is a good thing for a rookie franchise quarterback.
But like Purdy, Williams, 23, told reporters this week the tough times could be a “stepping stone” to reaching his potential.
“You know, things like that all happening within a couple weeks of each other, you know I think it would help me in the long run being able to handle all of this, being able to handle this first year and being able to grow from it,” Williams said.
His clock management notwithstanding, Williams appears to be catching on. He’s had nine games without an interception, which trails only the Chargers’ Justin Herbert (11) and Baltimore’s Lamar Jackson (10). For the season, Williams his completing 61.6 percent of his passes for 2,612 yards, 14 touchdowns and five interceptions and an 86.1 rating — numbers not that much different than Purdy.
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Like Purdy, who has scrambled for 271 yards and 26 first downs, Daniels has also kept drives alive with 378 yards and 23 first downs even as he’s taken 49 sacks in the process.
“He’s as talented as there is,” Shanahan said of Williams. “The stuff you saw in college, you can see in the NFL. As good of a thrower as there is, born to play the position, has the athletic ability to do whatever, the speed to do whatever. He’s getting better as the year goes.”
Williams has lots of room to grow. The situation is more dire from Purdy, who needs to re-establish himself over the next five games in a “what have you done for me lately” environment.
