49ers’ Kyle Shanahan explains “real deal” comment about Brock Purdy

Earlier this month, San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan praised his second-year quarterback, Brock Purdy, calling him the "real deal." Unsurprisingly, the label caught the media's attention, with many wondering how a comment like that could be made about a young quarterback with only eight career starts.

"He's doing some good things," Shanahan said on August 3. "They're all doing some good, all doing some bad. But we're not worried about Brock. Brock's the real deal. He knows how to play, and we just got to have our team keep getting better, and he'll keep getting better as we go."

The 49ers coach recently joined Sirius XM NFL Radio for an interview and was asked about the "real deal" comment about Purdy.

"Well, my vocabulary is not that great, so sometimes I make dramatic statements that I see it when I reread it," Shanahan admitted.

San Francisco made Purdy the final overall pick, No. 262 overall, in last year's draft. The quarterback went on to earn the respect of his coach and teammates, jumping into the starting lineup following injuries to Trey Lance and Jimmy Garoppolo.

"Last year, he looked like one of our better guys in practice, but he hadn't done it in a game," Shanahan explained. "I was very confident that he was going to be a good player, but you're never confident that he's the 'real deal.' And what I mean by the 'real deal' is a legit guy. You don't have questions about him. You don't know that until he plays in games.

"And we got to play with him for seven games last year, and they're real games. You watch the tape, you can't take anything away from him. He was as just important as [RB] Christian [McCaffrey] was, as [WR] Deebo [Samuel] was, as all these guys are. And when you watch some of the plays he made, just getting the ball to guys so consistently, you watch some of the plays he made when nothing was there, and you didn't think there was a play, and he'd come find a way to make one. And the fact that he never lost a game."

It was enough to give the head coach the confidence to name Purdy the 49ers' starter for the upcoming season. Even as he recovered from offseason surgery on his throwing arm, a healthy Purdy was always going to be the Week 1 starter, leaving Lance, last season's Week 1 starter, to compete with Sam Darnold for the QB2 job.

"When you have that much tape, when people ask me those questions, I don't get what they're so surprised about," Shanahan added. "He put it on tape. Now you got to go out and do it again. You got to get healthy, which I think he has. Things do get harder the more you play, but he played a while. It's not just me who says that and thinks that. It's every player on our team. So that's not what we're worried about.

"We're trying to put the best guys out there. I always say, like most people do, you never stay the same. Brock played real well in those seven games, and we expect him to play better this year."