Slowly but surely, the excuses from the Brock Purdy doubters are ebbing away and being replaced with a grudging respect as he ends 2025 with the biggest hot streak on the field.
Brock Purdy is not a man who is bothered by his doubters, he just simply doesn't care about the outside noise by some pundits.
He never has.
Ryan Clark. Colin Cowherd. Nick Wright. Cam Newton. Steven Ruiz. LeSean McCoy. Mike Florio. They and plenty more have all been of the opinion that Purdy was carried by his coach, Kyle Shanahan, and supporting cast.
Despite this same argument not being made of quarterbacks taken in the first round of the NFL Draft.
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Well, except Florio, Purdy just had to change his name for some reason. Remember that?
But after Purdy engineered one of the quarterbacking displays of the season in the 42-38 win over the Chicago Bears, with five total touchdowns to go with his five passing touchdowns against the Indianapolis Colts the week prior, high praise has come from the most unlikely of pundits.
To be fair to Florio, he's one of the lesser of his detractors and had been praiseful of Purdy as well. He was one of those who got the Brock Purdy Apology Week underway with some high praise, saying "Brock Purdy is playing like Josh Allen" in his power rankings this week.
Wright has been arguably the analyst with the biggest amount of Purdy slander, and he did pull some of his praise by giving credit to running back Christian McCaffrey for a lot of the win, but he also did put Purdy in the top six of his Mahomes Mountain bit that he does every week. Wright famously refused to even put him in the top 10 even during his 2023 MVP run, for comparison.
With Cowherd, he seemed to finally come around to the idea that Purdy isn't being pulled along by the scheme but was a true gamewinner, singling him out for praise on The Herd:
"I always thought Brock Purdy had talent, but I thought he was very dependent on Shanahan and Christian McCaffrey. But he didn't have Kittle last night, he didn't have left tackle Trent Williams, he hasn't had Brandon Aiyuk all year. And last night he was attack, attack, attack.Colin Cowherd
With mobility, with accuracy. Yeah he threw a pick six, I told you for years that Tom Brady threw pick sixes in Super Bowls he's won. Yes, he threw another inteception and got a bit of an officiating break in the endzone. I like this Purdy. Attack, aggressive. The last three weeks is the best he's ever played, you can win a Super Bowl with this quarterback play."
McCoy on the Speakeasy podcast had similar thoughts on his mind, talking to longtime Purdy supporter Emmanuel Acho that he thinks this version of Purdy could hoist the Lombardi trophy and apologising:
"If this Brock Purdy shows up, they might be doing something. I'm thinking, what other teams can play like that? I'm thinking the Rams, the defending champs. But who else over there? That's really it, that I really believe in.LeSean McCoy
Yeah, I like this Brock Purdy. Now I want to apologise. Because Brock, see, I keep forgetting though, when he play like that. He has some games where it’s like ugh, let’s throw it away. But then he has some games like this, like, yo, don’t forget. So I want to give him that credit because he made us all remember how special he really is."
There's some other examples of praise, but those just go to show that the narrative has finally flicked the switch on a truth that 49ers fans have known for ages: Purdy isn't merely a game manager or lucky about where he got drafted, he's just really good at football.
We can argue about if these people should be kicked off any attempt to get on the bandwagon or just be happy that the tide is turning. But the real question might be, how great will the praise go if he can pick apart an elite Seattle Seahawks defense and bring home a No. 1 seed that not even the most passionate 49ers fan could have envision three months ago?
It'd be fun to find out if it happens.