The San Francisco 49ers are cruising through the beginning of the regular season, winning each of their first three games, with a home bout against the 0-2 Arizona Cardinals next on the docket.
In his return from a torn UCL sustained in last year's NFC Championship Game, quarterback Brock Purdy has picked up right where he left off, continuing his streak of remaining unbeaten in games he's started and finished, which has increased to eight in a row.
The success from 2022 has cemented Purdy as the franchise quarterback, as the 49ers traded away former franchise option Trey Lance to the Dallas Cowboys, but some aren't as confident in the 2022 seventh-round pick.
Amongst them is Pro Football Talk's Mike Florio, who shared a unique reason for not anointing Purdy as a franchise-level quarterback: his supposedly "weird" name.
"When you think of a franchise quarterback, you think of Joe Montana, Dan Marino, right?" Florio said. "Brock Purdy is just kind of a weird name. It doesn't sound like a franchise quarterback name. Purdy's a little bit too close to Turdy. I just think people have a hard time looking at that name and saying that's a franchise quarterback."
While many have pointed to Purdy's limitations physically, his name hasn't usually popped up in conversations about being a franchise quarterback, and his fellow podcast host Peter King was quick to shut down that assertion.
"That easily is the most ridiculous point you've ever made," King said. "That's absurd. That's one of the silliest things I've ever heard."
Purdy is still young in his NFL career, having seen just nine starts over the course of his career, but has impressed the 49ers staff enough to safely anoint him as the starter over the course of the offseason.
The second-year quarterback will look to continue the trend in Week 4 at home against the Arizona Cardinals, which prefaces a difficult matchup against the Dallas Cowboys in Week 5 at Levi's Stadium.
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