With Brock Purdy, the 49ers are a quarterback-driven club, unlike Super Bowl LIV with Jimmy G.
This playoffs, the 49ers have trailed in the second half of both of their games, which has sent the fan base into a panic mid-game. These weaknesses, which included a 17-point setback against Detroit last week, may hold the secret to a more favorable conclusion in the Super Bowl than in their previous meeting with the Chiefs in the biggest game of the year.
The 49ers may feel emboldened for a reason, despite the seeming absurdity.
Let’s go back to February 2020 to Super Bowl LIV in Miami. Early in the fourth quarter, the 49ers intercepted the ball and went ahead 20-10 over the Kansas City Chiefs. The 49ers handed up the ball on downs, punted twice, and threw an interception on their final four drives, just when the game appeared to be under control.
Jimmy Garoppolo completed two of his final ten throws for 28 yards and an interception after the 49ers grabbed a 10-point lead. This includes the notorious Emmanuel Sanders overthrow, which cost the team the lead in the last two minutes of the game despite having the chance to be a 51-yard touchdown.
However, there is a significant difference between the 49ers of 2019 and those of 2023, and coach Kyle Shanahan is better suited to succeed this time around because of it. Garoppolo was robotic-looking but largely efficient. Compared to Garoppolo, Brock Purdy is more productive and has the creativity to successfully color outside the lines.
Unlike with Garoppolo, Shanahan has given Purdy more control over the game; this time around, with the second-half deficits, a change in mindset was crucial.
But there’s more to it than that: Shanahan can be more aggressive with Purdy. Rather than call plays with the aim of disguising his quarterback’s deficiencies, as he did with Garoppolo, Shanahan can attack using Purdy’s strengths and with the knowledge that his quarterback can make something out of nothing if a play breaks down.
Kansas City head coach Andy Reid has enjoyed the same kind of security with quarterback Patrick Mahomes, who led the Chiefs to three touchdowns in Super Bowl LIV when the 49ers went inert with Garoppolo.
The 49ers established the run and made Garoppolo a machine for handoffs in their postseason games against Minnesota and Green Bay following the 2019 season. They outran the Vikings 47 times for 186 yards and won 27-10. They defeated the Packers 37–20 by running it 42 times for 285 yards.
Garoppolo was 8 of 10 for 55 yards in the second halves of both games combined, with zero risk, zero interceptions, and no touchdowns. When it counted most in the second half of this year’s playoff games, Purdy was 26 of 39 for 301 yards and a touchdown.
During the 2019 postseason, it was easy to draw the boundaries. Garoppolo intercepted a pass intended for linebacker Eric Kendricks at the 49ers’ 19-yard line just before the Minnesota game’s halftime break. Although the gift only resulted in a field goal for the Vikings, Shanahan had had enough. He switched off Garoppolo.
Using a sledgehammer running game, Shanahan called 66 rush plays and 14 passes in the following 18 minutes.
With Purdy, the 49ers are now a quarterback-driven team, something they weren’t under Garoppolo. The 49ers haven’t needed Purdy to play from behind since taking over as quarterback, which raised doubts in the never-ending drive by some sections of conventional and social media media to disparage Purdy.
It’s not the case now.
Linebacker Fred Warner stated, “Brock showed everyone who he is and he’s the reason we have an opportunity to win this ring.”
Shanahan said, “Yes,” when I asked him on Monday if there was a benefit to playing two gut-check games in the playoffs this year as compared to 2019, when they ran the ball 89 times and threw 27 passes. However, he did not address his quarterback in his response.
“When you go through stuff like this it hardens you through any situation,” Shanahan said. “You want to be able to go through tons of games and win any way possible.”
tense conclusion George Kittle, whose passion for blocking is well known, admitted that the 49ers gained just as much, if not more, from this year’s traumatic postseason as he did from shoving around the Vikings and Packers during the last Super Bowl run.
“I thought our team in 2019 did a fantastic job handling those games,” Kittle said. “Teams come to the stadium and (we) kind of whup up on them. But when you have to come back and win two very gritty games … it kind of throws some gas on the fire for a sense of urgency.
“‘Hey guys, we were almost out of this two different times and we were a good enough team, good enough coaches to come back and get those wins, but let’s try not to do that again.’”
Alternatively, as former 49ers quarterback Steve Young stated on his weekly radio program on KNBR: “We’ve avoided a bullet for the past two weeks, and I don’t think we anticipated being that kind of team, avoiding bullets at Thanksgiving.”