Brock Purdy Is Carving Up Training Camp. Twenty Guys Watched Him Do It From the Sideline.
Thirteen of fourteen in team drills. Three straight touchdowns in one red zone period. A Dougie in the end zone after a rushing score, because the man is having the time of his life out there. And on the same field, on the same afternoon, twenty players were unavailable. Both of those sentences are about the same football team.
Let's start with the good, because it is genuinely great
Brock Purdy is playing the best camp football of his career and it is not close. Thirteen completions on fourteen attempts in team periods. A red zone drill where he accounted for three touchdowns in a row — three consecutive snaps in the tightest, hardest part of the field, against a defense that knows what is coming. A move-the-ball period he finished in the end zone. And then, after a rushing touchdown, he broke out the Dougie in front of everybody, which is not something a quarterback does when he is thinking too hard.
That is the thing that jumps off the practice reports. The processing is instant. He is not surveying, he is deciding. The throws are on time and on the correct shoulder and he is finding new bodies — building chemistry with Mike Evans on the sideline throws, hitting Demarcus Robinson in the back corner earlier in the week, going to whichever tight end is standing upright that day. Year after year the question about Purdy is whether he is a product of the machine around him. Right now, the machine around him is in pieces and he is the best player on the field by a wide margin. That answers something.
Now the list. Take a breath.
Twenty players did not go Wednesday. TWENTY. And it is not a phantom number padded out with veterans on scheduled rest days, though there is some of that: Nick Bosa, Dre Greenlaw and Osa Odighizuwa were all down with soreness, which the team is calling maintenance and which I choose to believe for now because I have to sleep at night.
The rest of it is not maintenance. George Kittle is on PUP with the Achilles. Kyle Juszczyk broke a finger. Jordan James has a fractured rib. Rookie offensive lineman Carver Willis is in concussion protocol. Vederian Lowe has a high ankle sprain, which is a six-week word dressed up as a three-week word. Gracen Halton has a bone bruise in his knee. Andrew Farmer II has a back issue. Sam Okuayinonu walked off with an ankle. Jacob Cowing has a hip flexor strain.
And the receiver room — the room they spent all offseason rebuilding — is a triage tent. Mike Evans is out with a quad strain. Christian Kirk is out with a calf strain. Rookie De'Zhaun Stribling, who has flashed every time he has been upright, is dealing with hamstring tightness. That is three of the guys who are supposed to catch passes in September, all sidelined in the same week, which is exactly why the front office signed KhaDarel Hodge and Trenton Irwin off the street in a seven-day span. Those signings were not opportunism. They were a fire drill.
This is the part where I stop being calm about it
Every August I promise myself I will not do the panic thing. Camp injuries happen. Soft tissue in the first ten days is normal. Teams hide guys. I know all of it. But this is the fourth straight summer where the 49ers' training camp story has been the medical tent, and at some point the pattern is not variance, it is a characteristic. This roster has been the most talented in the NFC for years and has spent every one of those years trying to reach January with its skill positions intact and failing. Kittle on PUP in August is the same sentence I typed last year and the year before.
And Kyle Shanahan is still working his way back himself, ramping up on the field after the car accident in July. The head coach is on a return schedule. That tells you what kind of camp this has been.
What it means
What it means is that the quarterback is ready and nothing else is, and the 49ers have about five weeks to change that. The good news — real good news, not the kind I usually have to manufacture — is that Purdy does not appear to need a fully healthy supporting cast to be excellent. He has thrown to backups and street signings all week and the completion numbers have not moved. Romello Height has been flashing off the edge in pass-rush drills, which matters more than it sounds like it does when Bosa is on a maintenance plan. There are guys stepping up.
But you cannot bank camp reps. You can only bank health, and this team keeps making withdrawals. Purdy is dancing in the end zone. Twenty of his teammates are on the bikes. Somebody get this man an offensive line, a tight end and two receivers who can finish a Wednesday.
They practice again Thursday morning. I will be refreshing the injury report like everybody else.
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