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Will Brock Purdy bounce back after signing mega deal with the 49ers?

Brock Purdy hasn't been the same quarterback since he lost the Super Bowl.
Grant Cohn|
Jun 11, 2025; Santa Clara, CA, USA; San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy (13) throws a pass during a team OTA at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: D. Ross Cameron-Imagn Images
Jun 11, 2025; Santa Clara, CA, USA; San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy (13) throws a pass during a team OTA at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: D. Ross Cameron-Imagn Images | D. Ross Cameron-Imagn Images

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San Francisco 49ers

Brock Purdy hasn't been the same quarterback since he lost the Super Bowl.

Before that game, he had arguably the best performance of his career in the 49ers' NFC Championship win over the Detroit Lions. The 49ers were down by 17 at halftime and he led the team all the way back.

But in the Super Bowl, he lost a close game in which he was leading late. Since then, he has lost almost every close game he has been in. Including the Super Bowl, Purdy is 2-6 in his last eight one-score games. And yet, the 49ers gave him a five-year, $265 million contract anyway.

They think last year was an aberration, and maybe they're right. But when you look at his numbers, you see some troubling trends.

For three seasons in a row, his touchdown percentage has gone down while his interception percentage has gone up. Last season, his 2.6 interception percentage was above the league average of 2.2, and his 4.4 touchdown percentage was below the league average of 4.5.

What's more, Purdy struggles in the clutch. He never has thrown a touchdown pass in the last five minutes of a one-score game, his career passer rating during the fourth quarter of one-score games is 70.9, and his career passer rating in the last two minutes of the half is 79.9.

Purdy and the 49ers blew out lots of teams early in his career because he was so cheap and they were so talented. Now, he's the seventh-highest-paid player in the NFL, and the team around him isn't nearly as good as it was two years ago, which means they're going to be in lots of close games. And teams pay quarterbacks more than $50 million per season to win those games more than they lose them.

We'll see if Purdy can justify his massive contract this season. He certainly didn't last season.

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Grant Cohn
GRANT COHN

Grant Cohn has covered the San Francisco 49ers daily since 2011. He spent the first nine years of his career with the Santa Rosa Press Democrat where he wrote the Inside the 49ers blog and covered famous coaches and athletes such as Jim Harbaugh, Colin Kaepernick and Patrick Willis. In 2012, Inside the 49ers won Sports Blog of the Year from the Peninsula Press Club. In 2020, Cohn joined FanNation and began writing All49ers. In addition, he created a YouTube channel which has become the go-to place on YouTube to consume 49ers content. Cohn's channel typically generates roughly 3.5 million viewers per month, while the 49ers' official YouTube channel generates roughly 1.5 million viewers per month. Cohn live streams almost every day and posts videos hourly during the football season. Cohn is committed to asking the questions that 49ers fans want answered, and providing the most honest and interactive coverage in the country. His loyalty is to the reader and the viewer, not the team or any player or coach. Cohn is a new-age multimedia journalist with an old-school mentality, because his father is Lowell Cohn, the legendary sports columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle from 1979 to 1993. The two have a live podcast every Tuesday. Grant Cohn grew up in Oakland and studied English Literature at UCLA from 2006 to 2010. He currently lives in Oakland with his wife.

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