SANTA CLARA, Calif. — In the million-points-of-data football world we live in, sometimes the best assessment comes down to just trusting the feel of people who usually know better. That’s the data point — having confidence in another person’s confidence. And when it comes to Brock Purdy, we should have listened to head coach Kyle Shanahan earlier and believed more of what he was saying.
When I watched Purdy dice up the Dallas Cowboys in a 42-10 win on Sunday, I couldn’t stop thinking about an interaction I’d had in Lincoln Financial Field in January, a few hours before the NFC championship game kicked off between the San Francisco 49ers and Philadelphia Eagles.