49ers are Taking the Cautious Approach With Brock Purdy

Brock Purdy is officially cleared to practice with the 49ers at training camp, but the team is not going to give him a full workload just yet.

Fantastic news Tuesday regarding the status of Brock Purdy.

John Lynch revealed at the 49ers training camp opener press conference that Purdy has been fully cleared to practice. After an entire offseason of recovering and rehabbing, Purdy has made it right on time to be part of training camp from the jump. Despite being cleared, the 49ers are electing to go with the cautious approach with Purdy.

"Brock's cleared and ready to go. He's been cleared and gonna be without restrictions," said Lynch. "Now, having said that we're sticking and we're adhering to a plan that has been put in place for some time and he got after it the last couple of days. We upped his pitch count, so it was kind of the peak of the buildup, so he'll take off day one. He's cleared without restriction. There will be some time off due to pitch count and all that; sticking to the plan. But the great news is Brock has worked his tail off and he's ready to go." 

A wise decision for the 49ers to be cautious with Purdy. The last thing they want is to give him a full workload and potentially undo all of the progress he has made up until this point. As Lynch stated, this past weekend was the most work Purdy has done thus far with his workload. So, right now it is all about monitoring how his arm responds as his snaps increase.

When asked if Purdy will be the starter when he takes the field, Shanahan made it clear that he will be the guy.

"He will when he's out there," said Shanahan. "The throwing plans are a little different. We're never gonna have him go three days in a row, so today he threw just with his schedule from the weekend and everything. So, today he threw, so tomorrow he won't practice so the other guys will do the same thing as OTAs, they'll both go with the ones, and then Brock will have practices two and three to go, then he'll take the next one off and keep going that way."

For the majority of training camp, it will be Purdy taking the first team reps with Trey Lance and Sam Darnold competing for the backup job. So, is this the schedule that Purdy will be on throughout training camp? Not at all. The 49ers will reevaluate Purdy fairly soon.

"I think the goal is a couple weeks from now," said Shanahan on Purdy practicing fully. "I haven't looked that far past. We won't change that until that happens and as long as it keeps staying on the course, then he'll eventually go all the days."

Slow and steady wins the race. I commend the 49ers for taking it fairly easy on Purdy. This is exactly the way they needed to integrate him to see how his body responds and note any differences prior to the injury. We'll see soon if Purdy is handling the workload well enough to be a full participant.