Legend of Brock Purdy continues during 49ers incredible run

SANTA CLARA – Brock Purdy is not from this planet.

He simply can’t. He is an alien who has come down and taken over a simple human form so as to hide his extra-terrestrial powers, as if this was a story from a sci-fi movie, not just an out-of-nowhere sports classic.

Purdy, who heretofore should be known as Mr. Revelation rather than Mr. Irrelevant, had just laid waste to the Seattle Seahawks and earned the social media praise of LeBron James, he finished getting dressed in his jeans, tennis shoes and button-down shirt. Before he exited the locker room, he neatly put the folding chair in front of his locker rather than leave it for the staff to tidy.

Yes, the same guy who had posterized the Seahawks in the NFC Wild Card game and gone viral by striking a superhero pose along the way, had to make sure his seat in the corner of the locker room was left right. If his play wasn’t proof, this moment demonstrated that he is simply too perfect.

Again, we’re getting to the point where you have to wonder if Purdy is even human. Does actually have a mother or is this like Superman, where he was dropped on Earth and raised by humans to hide the fact that he has otherworldly powers.

Or, as several 49ers players were asked after the game, what planet is Purdy from?

Left tackle Trent Williams, a man who knows of greatness, just smiled when asked that question.

“This is just him,” Williams said, trying to play it off. “He’s been doing this since Day 1 of training camp.”

Yeah, Trent, that sounds great, but this is the NFL playoffs and Purdy was the last guy taken in the 2022 NFL Draft. This is not supposed to be happening.

“He’s a stud. He is a certified stud,” Williams said.

Brock Purdy has proven capable of taking the 49ers on a playoff run

Purdy completed 18 of 30 passes for 332 yards and three touchdowns. It was the first 300-yard game of his career as he led the 49ers to 41-23 shellacking of Seattle. It marked the fourth straight game in which the 49ers have scored at least 37 points and sixth time in seven games in which the 49ers have scored more than 30 points with Purdy.

The 49ers scored on eight of nine drives Purdy led. Over the past seven games, they have scored a touchdown or field goal on two-thirds of his drives. He is a machine in terms of efficiency and the stats don’t even do it justice.

On Purdy’s first touchdown pass, Seattle tried to trick him. They covered Jauan Jennings in the left slot with a linebacker, an obvious mismatch that any quarterback, even a 15-year veteran, would have salivated at.

Except it was a trick. Jennings was funneled inside by the linebacker as the safety came over to cover him, waiting for Purdy to unleash a throw that he could pick off and possibly return for a long score. Purdy saw it instantly, pulled the ball down quickly, slipped between two pass rusher and flipped a pass to running back Christian McCaffrey as he slipped out of the backfield.

McCaffrey walked into the end zone.

While the Seahawks managed to stay in the game for the first half and even take a 17-16 lead going into intermission, Purdy just came back firing in the second half. His ability to keep getting the 49ers into scoring position put pressure on the Seahawks, who also cracked along the way. After Seahawks safety Johanathan Abram intentionally twisted the ankle of wide receiver Deebo Samuel after a tackle, the 49ers got ticked off.

“That was stupid,” linebacker Fred Warner said of Abram’s dirty play. “That got us all fired up.”

Samuel’s 21-yard catch had converted a third-and-7 situation and put the 49ers at the 16. On the next five plays, the 49ers ran straight up the gut at the Seattle defense. Purdy finished the drive with a 1-yard touchdown.

He and the 49ers defense then finished the Seahawks. San Francisco forced turnovers on back-to-back possessions and Purdy continued to throw touchdowns. The first was a 7-yard score to running back Elijah Mitchell after Purdy first bootlegged to the left and then came all the way back to the right on a scramble to find Mitchell by himself.

The 49ers defense made adjustments against Geno Smith in the second half

The last touchdown was a 74-yarder to Samuel when Purdy once gain went to his left and found Samuel 20 yards down field. Samuel took it the rest of the way. And if that wasn’t enough, Purdy nearly threw a fourth TD when he scrambled for roughly eight seconds before finding wide receiver Brandon Aiyuk in the furthest stretch of the right corner of the end zone.

The perfect throw hit Aiyuk in the hands, but he couldn’t control it to the ground.

It was breathtaking, mind-boggling and again begged the question, where did this dude come from?

Like Williams, linebacker Dre Greenlaw laughed about that and then likened Purdy to perhaps a character from the sci-fi classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

“He’s different,” Greenlaw said. “When he was scout team against us, the things he was doing then, if we just let him develop, I knew we would have something special. I could tell then, I thought possibly … I thought we had Drew Brees on scout team.”

Yes, somehow, some way, Purdy had gone back in time and taken over the body of a similarly undersized quarterback who happened to make himself into one of the all-time greats.

“I told people we got Drew Brees on the scout team,” Greenlaw said. “Nobody understood what I was saying. The whole year we had Trey (Lance) and Jimmy (Garoppolo) battling and me and Fred we’re saying, ‘Hey, this guys, he’s the man. From the time we started OTAs … Purdy? We ain’t never seen someone throw balls like that.”