The 49ers are juggling contract demands from a few players who have been staying off the field with training camp underway.
On the field? Brock Purdy is seeking to refine his killer instinct.
The third-year quarterback enters training camp coming off his first full, healthy offseason to prepare as San Francisco’s starter, and he’s eager to build off that by turning in even more dominance than the Niners did in 2023.
“With as good of a team that we have, I want to get to that point where we get to the third quarter, there’s a couple of drives that are crucial, I’m on top of my stuff, we convert on third downs, and we score touchdowns and the lead just gets out of hand,” Purdy told the San Francisco Chronicle’s Michael Silver. “It’s having that Tom Brady kind of feeling. Late in the game, it always felt like Tom was just gonna take over and not make it close. I feel like I can get to that.”
It’ll be difficult to improve on the dominance Purdy and Co. put on display last season, when they went 12-5, finished with the NFC’s top seed and reached the Super Bowl. The team’s 193-plus point differential trailed only the Baltimore Ravens and Dallas Cowboys, and 11 of its 12 regular-season victories were by multiple possessions.
Purdy himself threw for 4,280 yards, 31 touchdowns and 11 interceptions, leading the league with a 7.0 touchdown percentage, 9.6 yards per attempt, 113.0 passer rating and 72.8 QBR.
It’s the close losses and the narrow playoff wins that have probably stuck in Purdy’s craw across the past several months, though.
The 49ers required comebacks in both their 24-21 Divisional Round win over the Green Bay Packers and 34-31 NFC Championship Game victory against the Detroit Lions. In the Super Bowl, San Francisco held a fourth-quarter lead and lost it to the Chiefs.
“I want to be dominant,” Purdy said. “Not just win games and feel like, ‘Eh.’ I want to be dominant with consistent decisions and feeling like we’re the top dogs every day.
“There were moments last year in games where I would just — I don’t know what it was in the situation — but we’d be up and it’s, ‘All right, be smart with the ball,’ or ‘Let’s just make sure we don’t mess up.’ I want to break through that and get to this point of just being dominant, for four quarters, man. That’s my mindset.”
San Francisco has some work to do to ensure wide receiver Brandon Aiyuk, currently a hold-in, and left tackle Trent Williams, a holdout as of Sunday, return to the fold, but the team has the same core players as it did during last season’s run.
Purdy, with a story much like Brady’s as the last player picked in the 2022 NFL Draft, knows emulating his late-game, shut-the-door ways will take consistency from all of them.
“It’s football,” he said. “And for four quarters, man, we’ve gotta have that bloody mindset of going and taking it. Every down, every series, every rep.”
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