Brock Purdy and the 49ers’ young core are evolving into superstars - but the growing pains are evident

With 10 minutes left in the game and the 49ers hanging on to a narrow lead, RB Jordan Mason took a handoff up the middle and gouged his way through the defense. One stiff-arm later, there was nothing but daylight ahead of him.

For a brief, glorious moment, there was a window to score and salt the game away. Between Cardinals safety Budda Baker and the sideline, Mason had an angle to turn on the jets and race home for the touchdown.

Just look how close he came. Mason's success this season has been as striking as it's been unexpected; nobody came into the season expecting the 25-year-old Georgia Tech product to do much. But Mason assumed the role of RB1 smoothly enough that the 49ers' brass have decided that they can wait half a season or more for the return of All-Pro RB Christian McCaffrey from his nagging Achilles issues. All Mason needed to do to prove himself was to break McCaffrey's franchise record for most rushing yards through the first five games of a season, set last year at 510 before Mason's 536-yard stretch eclipsed that on Sunday.

But for all of Mason's accolades this year, he's not the game-breaking talent that McCaffrey is. Not right now, anyways. Baker tracked down Mason on that crucial play, limiting him to a (still-decent) 20-yard gain, which opened the door for a devastating red zone fumble later that drive. The Cardinals drove back to take the lead, and the 49ers, facing the type of adversity that any contending team must be able to overcome, crumbled.

There exists no better microcosm for the 49ers' season than that fateful drive. Massive contributions from the 49ers' young core, confident and powerful play all the way down the field, then fumbling it all away right in front of the finish line like a proverbial wet bar of soap. This is a team with the tools to be an all-time great squad, but also a team that does not know how to use them.

Yet.

The 49ers are misfiring on all cylinders right now. A team that's made the past three NFC Championships still feels like it's rounding into form, as each new week brings staggered gains that can't quite make up for new problems elsewhere. Perhaps the biggest shortcoming is on the offensive side of the ball, where despite career outings for Jauan Jennings and (now) Brandon Aiyuk this year, the 49ers' suddenly pass-happy offense continues to take on water.

It's hard to know what to blame. Yards After Catch, always a staple of Kyle Shanahan's offenses, has tanked so far this year. Rarely this season have George Kittle or Deebo Samuel taken short passes and punished defenses for giving them space. The epidemic of dropped passes this year has already surpassed last year's total, when San Francisco's receivers dropped only 9(!!) passes all season. And Purdy's high-wire scrambling acts, entertaining to the extreme, nevertheless gave San Francisco few advantages when the offense absolutely had to pull through.

While all of these are unlikely to remain problems for the entire year, the offense looks too disjointed to simply snap right into place when one more piece comes back. There's something bigger going on, something that Kyle Shanahan's subdued locker room addresses and CMC's trips to Germany won't interrupt:

They're evolving.

Every part of this team is changing. Fred Warner is channeling Patrick Willis as the defense tries to turn its depth into stars. Brock Purdy and the offense are pushing their limits as they try to find out what they can do when defenses take away their bread and butter and give them deep shots and broken play opportunities. And the special teams... well, we'll get to that.

Let's start with the offense. San Francisco opened Sunday's game with pass attempts on seven of their first eight plays, in part because Arizona's defense stinks. But on the other hand, in a contract year without his best players, Purdy is being given the opportunity to be The Guy. And it's been a little shaky - the efficiency simply hasn't been there the past few games. But on Sunday, it only took two plays for Purdy to do something that he's done consistently this year - he created time and space and made someone look silly while doing it.

Purdy's underrated athleticism has been a hot topic amongst football insiders, but his ability to control space when pressured has been inconsistent in his career. This year, though, he's harnessing it. And regular scramble drills aren't the only thing he's changing. After spending all of last year carving defenses up with anticipation throws to breaking receivers, Purdy is now forcing balls downfield further than anyone else and throwing into tighter windows than anyone else. It's as though he's completely re-inventing his game style to take away any possible weaknesses that defenses can key in on.

Where the frustration comes in, though, is that this is not a seamless process. The art of holding onto the ball longer and making second and third-effort plays isn't yet in the DNA of this team, and we can all feel it. And as exciting a development as this is for 49ers fans, Purdy still has more to prove. When he scrambles for 12 seconds and picks up a first down, sometimes he's making something out of nothing. Other times, like Aiyuk's deep route against the Rams, he's missing the best shots he's ever going to get.

There's a balance between taking (or creating) the easy play when it's available, creating plays when those options aren't, and getting too greedy and inviting big negative plays. The two interceptions and the massive red-zone sack on Sunday show that Purdy and the 49ers are living too far in the negative end of that spectrum. But perhaps that's simply something that Purdy and his embattled receiving corps need to experience in order to create a truly unstoppable force late in games.

In retrospect, it shouldn't be surprising that it's taken until now for such dramatic playstyle changes to unveil themselves. For the last half-decade now, the offense hasn't needed to be a savior until the very last plays of the season. When the defense is anchored by stars like DE Nick Bosa, LB Fred Warner, and a glut of über-talented cornerbacks, you'll win a lot of games by playing safe, smart, and efficient on offense. This year, under first-year coordinator Nick Sorenson, the defense hasn't been as aggressively dominant. But unlike the past few weeks, the defense played well enough to win on Sunday.

Right now, that side of the ball is a bit of a Rorschach test. You have Bosa and DE Leonard Floyd anchoring the line, with some young guys like Maliek Collins and Sam Okuayinonu flashing on pretty consistent bases. Fred Warner alone makes any linebacking corps above-average, and have an enviable core of young and established talent in their secondary. But the 2019 squad they are not. Right now, it's simply hard to tell what direction their arrow is pointing.

The one group that absolutely is in trouble, though, is the special teams. With the loss of kicker Jake Moody, San Francisco has significantly less margin from error in all phases of the game. The offense must drive deeper, and more consistently, to maintain point production. The defense will feel the knock-on effects of however successful that focus is, too. And that doesn't even touch on the special teams play outside of field goal tries, which has been, in a word, disastrous.

San Francisco's special teams unit needs to fundamentally change how they approach the opportunity to affect the game; otherwise, they'll continue to be struck by mishaps without any real way to inflict that upon their opponents. For the first time in a long while, they did just that on Sunday, producing a blocked kick returned for a touchdown, a much-needed splash play from a normally quiet unit.

More of that would certainly be welcome! But kickoffs and punts, too, need improvement. It almost seems poetic that on the one kickoff Moody failed to push through the back of the end zone, he got hurt after needing to block the returner himself. Shanahan's special teams units have operated under a risk-avoidance policy, and that has given an edge to seemingly every opponent they've played. Perhaps that's the key - until San Francisco scares opponents on punt and kickoff returns (and gets their kicker back fully healthy), they won't be able to dominate opponents they way they have the past few years.

But until they're ready to do that, it's easy to wonder if they should try to eliminate all risk entirely. Never return the ball, unless forced to. Never let the opposition return, risk kickoffs sailing out of bounds and punts going a little short if need be. Don't run back punts, just let them bounce however far they'll go. If risk avoidance is truly the only way, then that's the way it'll have to look; ugly, painful, and boring.

Hopefully, the 49ers coaching staff figures out what needs to be done to truly be competitive in that game phase, despite the limitations they have. It certainly won't be easy, given the inconsistency they already have on the offense and defensive sides. It might even lose them a few games. But the broader undercurrent of this season has been that despite being over-equipped and over-producing, the 49ers have found ways to lose games this season by following the flow.

More accurately, hungrier teams than them have found ways to scratch and claw for every advantage, and perform under pressure while taking the risks they can't afford to pass up. San Francisco must find a way to tap into that desperation and unlock new ways to climb back atop the NFL hierarchy. If they can't, it'll be another humdrum season of unmet expectations. For better or worse, though, it seems like their growth process has already started.