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SAN FRANCISCO
The Man Who Saved The Season, QB BROCK PURDY got the job done on Thursday night in Seattle. Nick Wagoner of ESPN.com:
With a couple of exceptions, nobody on the San Francisco 49ers knows better than defensive lineman Arik Armstead just how hard it is to beat the Seattle Seahawks at Lumen Field.
For all of Armstead’s eight years in the NFL, he has been part of teams that have come to Seattle and left with disappointing losses. There was only one notable exception, in 2019, when the Niners beat the Seahawks in a thriller to clinch the NFC West division and the NFC’s No. 1 seed.
After Thursday night, there are now two notable exceptions, as the Niners jumped on the Seahawks early and held on for a 21-13 win. And, for the second time in four seasons, the Niners were able to enjoy a T-shirt-and-hat celebration in the stadium of their biggest nemesis.
“I’ve only done it twice in my eight years, so that shows you how hard it is,” Armstead said of clinching the NFC West. “And to do it against Seattle, we wouldn’t want it any other way. A team that has been a thorn in our side ever since I’ve been here. So, to get it done against them definitely felt great.”
Just like in 2019, the 49ers claimed the division crown on Seattle’s home field, and, with three games to play, it’s the earliest they’ve wrapped up the division since 2011. Perhaps not coincidentally, it’s also the first time San Francisco has swept the Seahawks since that 2011 season.
With the win, the Niners improved to 10-4 and claimed their seventh straight victory, their longest winning streak since an eight-game tear in 2019. The victory ensures they can finish no lower than the No. 3 seed in the NFC playoffs.
The 49ers close out the season with a home game against the Washington Commanders on Christmas Eve, a visit to the Las Vegas Raiders on New Year’s Day and by hosting the Arizona Cardinals in the season finale.
Although San Francisco has been plagued by injuries and could use the down time to get healthy, it can still realistically catch the 10-3 Minnesota Vikings for the No. 2 seed.
“This isn’t our final goal by any means,” coach Kyle Shanahan said. “I’m very proud of our team and what we accomplished throughout the year to get to this. Our goal is to get into the tournament, and we accomplished that today, but now it’s all trying to set that up to be the best situation we can and hopefully get some of our guys back, too, in the process.”
At the top of the “needs to heal” list is rookie quarterback Brock Purdy. On a short week after suffering a rib and oblique issue Sunday against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Purdy didn’t so much as attempt a single pass in practice this week.
In fact, the only throwing he did before pregame warm-ups Thursday night was at a hotel ballroom during the team’s day-of-game walk-through in Seattle. Even during warm-ups, Shanahan believed there was a chance Purdy might not play or, at minimum, not be able to finish the game. Veteran quarterback Josh Johnson was on standby.
But Purdy, the 262nd and final pick in the 2022 NFL draft, said he never doubted he’d play against the Seahawks.
“I knew I was going to come out to start the game off and just try to get into a rhythm and see how my oblique and all that kind of stuff felt,” Purdy said. “And then make a decision. But my mindset was, ‘Man, I’m coming into this place to play and to start.'”
Purdy not only finished the game but put together another strong, mistake-free outing. Aside from a throw that should have been intercepted just before half, Purdy never put the ball in harm’s way, finishing with no interceptions and two touchdowns while completing 17 of 26 passes for 217 yards with a passer rating of 117.0.
Two starts into his young NFL career, Purdy has completed 70% of his attempts with four touchdowns and no interceptions, making him just the third quarterback — along with Aaron Rodgers and Jimmy Garoppolo — since 1950 to hit those marks in his first two starts.
Purdy even flashed his speed and poise with a late third-down scramble that helped ice the game.
“It was another level for me just watching someone do it,” Shanahan said. “The injury he had last week and for him to be ready to go today, which you still could tell in pregame warm-ups a number of things that were really tough for him, and for him to be able to just play, let alone the way he did, to protect the ball, he struggled to move a little bit at times. … Our team had a lot of respect for him before the game but a lot more now.”
Purdy also got plenty of help as tight end George Kittle finished with four catches for 93 yards and a pair of touchdowns, the Niners’ defense held a seventh straight opponent to 17 points or fewer and running back Christian McCaffrey did his usual heavy lifting.
McCaffrey finished with 32 touches for 138 yards from scrimmage and had a rushing touchdown. It was his fifth game with 100-plus scrimmage yards, making him the second midseason acquisition to hit that number, joining Eric Dickerson, who had six in 1987 for the Indianapolis Colts, according to Elias Sports Bureau research.
It’s no coincidence the 49ers are 7-0 since McCaffrey stepped into a full-time starter role in Week 8. Before that, San Francisco was averaging 20.7 points per game. Since then, the Niners have averaged 27.6 points per game.
Michael David Smith of ProFootballTalk.com:
The 49ers have won three games in a row since Jimmy Garoppolo was injured and third-string seventh-round rookie Brock Purdy became their quarterback, and 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan said after Thursday night’s game it was “unbelievable” how well Purdy played.
Shanahan said after the 49ers’ win over the Seahawks that he’s never seen a rookie like Purdy.
“He’s definitely the most poised rookie I’ve ever had,” Shanahan said. “He’s been like that since he got here. From what I hear about him in college he was very similar, starting as a freshman. He’s been great. He was poised all week, even being unsure whether he’d be able to go or not. I think that was uneasy for him because he didn’t know what to expect until he got into the game, but under the circumstances we didn’t have any other options.”
Purdy now has six touchdown passes and just one interception in his three games, the 49ers have won all three, and they look like they’re going to be just fine with their third-string quarterback in the playoffs.
If it was all about the money, GM John Lynch would not be GM John Lynch. Wagoner:
The San Francisco 49ers were less than 24 hours removed from their 2021 season ending in devastating fashion, and coach Kyle Shanahan’s tank was running low.
In the minds of Shanahan, general manager John Lynch and the Niners coaches and players, the season ended a game too early, as they coughed up a fourth-quarter lead to eventual Super Bowl champion Los Angeles Rams in the NFC Championship Game. Now, it was up to Lynch and Shanahan to pick up the pieces before the Niners went their separate ways. Shanahan asked Lynch to address the team with encouraging words for the months ahead.
As a Hall of Fame safety, Lynch had come up short before eventually breaking through by winning Super Bowl XXXVII with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. With that experience in mind, he wanted to deliver a message centered on the fortitude it takes to push through the pain of losing and come out on the other side better for it.
Everyone listening at the 49ers’ facility knew the faces would change in the offseason, with many players scheduled for free agency and coaches ticketed for other opportunities. Behind the scenes, Lynch was already pondering if he, too, would be on the way out.
In the weeks before the season ended, Lynch had been made aware that Prime Video, which would begin exclusively airing “Thursday Night Football” in 2022, was looking to fill out its broadcasting booth and willing to pay big money for recognizable names.
Lynch, who spent nine years as a color analyst at Fox, was near the top of the list. But as he stood before the assembled players and coaches on locker room clean out day, he couldn’t shake the same feeling of everyone in the room: unfinished business.
“I remember vividly being up there and saying, ‘I can’t leave these guys here,'” Lynch said. “I’m telling them here’s what it’s gonna take … Right then is when I knew.”
What Lynch knew was that regardless of the money, he couldn’t leave because his mission — to bring the 49ers a sixth Lombardi Trophy — was incomplete.
In nearly six years as general manager, Lynch has rarely talked at length about how his time on the job has been. He doesn’t love talking about himself, but recently sat down for a long conversation about the many hats he’s worn as general manager. Yet, he always comes back to the one he wants the most: world champion.
From the moment Shanahan and Lynch arrived in 2017 and reaffirmed with contract extensions in 2020, it’s been their obsession.
“I feel like it’s a demand,” Lynch said of winning a Super Bowl. “It kills me. Like, I can’t even tell you.”
In 2019, the Niners lost Super Bowl LIV to the Kansas City Chiefs. In 2012, before Lynch and Shanahan arrived, they fell to the Baltimore Ravens in Super Bowl XLVII. They again knocked on the door last year, coming up short but holding out hope they’re on the verge of kicking it down.
All of which is why Lynch, even after going through what he calls “the mechanics” of meeting with Prime Video executives and learning what the job might pay — reports indicate it could have roughly tripled Lynch’s salary to somewhere between $12 million and $15 million per year — wasn’t ready to walk away from what he and Shanahan had built.
It’s why Thursday night, when the Niners will try to clinch the NFC West with a victory over the Seattle Seahawks at Lumen Field (8:15 p.m. ET, Prime Video), Lynch will be watching from an owner’s box rather than a broadcast booth. And why Shanahan, who encouraged Lynch to consider the broadcasting job given its massive payday, is happy Lynch is still around to pursue the Lombardi Trophy.
“All I tried to tell him was when you have opportunities like this, like that’s too much to not make the right decision for you and your family,” Shanahan said. “Don’t just do something because you feel loyal to the Niners or loyal to me. It never was about the money really for John … it’s because he really loves being a part of a team.
“We love him here. I think he loves being here and hope he’s here for a long time.”
IN MANY WAYS, Lynch and Troy Aikman are kindred spirits. Both enjoyed Hall of Fame-playing careers before going on to success in the broadcast booth. What they didn’t know is that each aspired to run an NFL franchise, as they missed being part of a team and going home with a result — good or bad — each Sunday.
Which is why Aikman, who’s the color analyst for “Monday Night Football,” likes to joke with Lynch and Shanahan that had the Fox broadcasting schedule been a little bit different in the 2016 playoffs, Aikman, not Lynch, would be the Niners general manager.
At the time, Aikman worked on Fox’s top broadcasting crew with Joe Buck while Lynch was on the No. 2 team. When the playoff assignments were doled out, Lynch drew the Atlanta Falcons in the divisional round. It was in those production meetings and previous weeks of Lynch covering Falcons games that he and Shanahan, then Atlanta’s offensive coordinator ticketed for the Niners job, began discussing the idea of Lynch coming to San Francisco.
By the time Buck and Aikman were in a production meeting with Shanahan the following week for the NFC Championship Game, they had a good idea Lynch was going to San Francisco with Shanahan, who had been linked to the Niners as head coach for multiple weeks and would take the job as soon as Atlanta’s season ended.
“My first question to Kyle when he came into our production meeting, I asked him, ‘Kyle, are you telling me that if Fox had assigned me the divisional game for Atlanta that I’d be your GM right now?'” Aikman said, laughing. “But John Lynch is an all-time great person. He’s an old-school football guy. A great fit for those two. They’ve had enormous success.”
Lynch’s hiring came with plenty of questions. He would be a first-time general manager who had no formal experience on the personnel side and was joining Shanahan, a first-time head coach.
Shanahan didn’t care about going the unconventional route. He wanted someone who was honest, who could work well with people and would work hard so he could pick up things without direction.
It was an outside-the-box hire for a team that needed a massive rebuild both from a roster and culture standpoint after cycling through three coaches in as many years. At the time, Niners CEO Jed York emphasized the importance of having a tandem that could work through decisions and find the right solution even if they initially disagreed.
Lynch and Shanahan knew each other a bit from Lynch’s four seasons playing for Mike Shanahan with the Denver Broncos. They also shared a common affinity for the 49ers, with Shanahan loving the team as a kid when his dad was offensive coordinator and Lynch playing college ball at nearby Stanford for legendary coach Bill Walsh.
They quickly discovered a shared passion for restoring the franchise to greatness.
“He was the perfect guy to build a team with,” Shanahan said. “Not just the players, but the whole coaching staff, the whole personnel department … You had plenty of guys with experience who could do stuff and he hadn’t had that. But I think most people in that situation, they have a hard time admitting that they don’t know stuff.”
NEAR THE START of every 49ers practice as players go through stretching and individual drills, Shanahan and Lynch play catch. For Shanahan, it’s an opportunity to loosen his right arm before taking his spot as the quarterback opposite the starting defense during group game plan install.
It’s also a chance for Shanahan and Lynch to stay connected. The pair rarely talk business as they toss the ball around, but their daily routine has roots in a piece of advice Lynch received from former Bucs and Indianapolis Colts coach Tony Dungy when he first took the general manager job.
Lynch, who played for Dungy with the Bucs, remembers Dungy telling him to create opportunities to spend time with Shanahan so necessary discussions can come up organically.
“The general manager kind of impacts the front office and the staff,” Dungy said. “The head coach impacts the coaching staff and the players. And when you get everybody with the same message on board thinking alike, it’s really important. And then in the decision-making process, you want to be together, too. I told John I thought that was really important and I really think he and Kyle have that.”
While Shanahan and Lynch have developed a close bond, Lynch is the eternal optimist that Shanahan jokingly calls “Captain America” while Shanahan is a natural skeptic who prefers to be described as realistic over pessimistic but acknowledges both traits.
When a potential roster move arises, it’s not unusual for Lynch to be met with Shanahan’s immediate cynicism. Shanahan likens the process of big roster moves to buying a house with his wife, where he will point out everything wrong with it to her as a means to determine whether those things can be worked past.
That push and pull, with neither side taking disagreements personally, is necessary. Dungy recalls the Colts’ picking wideout Pierre Garcon in the sixth round of the 2008 draft.
Colts GM Bill Polian viewed Garcon as an intriguing developmental prospect, while Dungy believed the wideout from tiny Mount Union College was too raw. It was the classic battle of long-term versus short-term. The long-term won out and Garcon went on to play 11 years with 628 receptions for 7,854 yards and 38 touchdowns, coincidentally ending his career with the Niners after becoming one of Lynch and Shanahan’s first free agent additions.
WHEN LYNCH ARRIVED in 2017, he and Shanahan set out on a teardown and a plan to play it conservative on the rebuild. And for the most part, they did. Until October. That’s when they traded for quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo, effectively scuttling their initial plan to try to sign Kirk Cousins in free agency the following March and giving Garoppolo the first shot at becoming their franchise quarterback.
It was the first significant pivot from the Niners’ initial team-building plan and a harbinger of things to come.
After making what Lynch called the easiest decision of his tenure to draft end Nick Bosa with the No. 2 pick in the 2019 draft, then landing receiver Deebo Samuel in the second round, Lynch and Shanahan took stock of what was happening around them. Like the NBA, the NFL was becoming an increasingly star-powered league.
They’ve since made big trades for the likes of left tackle Trent Williams, running back Christian McCaffrey and up the draft board for quarterback Trey Lance.
“It feels like in all of these sports right now, it takes these superstars [to win],” Lynch said. “You understand those guys are essential to winning. The whole team is, every person out there is, but you need those guys. I think we’ve got as many of those guys as anybody. And that’s why we have a chance.”
Those moves have been supplemented by finding some superstars — such as Bosa, Samuel, linebacker Fred Warner and tight end George Kittle — in the draft. And the Niners have found a way to keep most of those players, even when it seemed unlikely. That’s most notably true in the case of Garoppolo.
After a long offseason unsuccessfully spent trying to trade Garoppolo, it seemed there was little chance he would be back. During an August practice, Lynch strolled up to Shanahan and suggested bringing Garoppolo back at a reduced rate. Per custom, Shanahan said “no way,” not because he didn’t want to retain Garoppolo but because he didn’t think the quarterback would go for it.
Lynch preached patience, encouraging Shanahan to let it all play out. Eventually, much to the surprise of many, Garoppolo stayed. Just as Samuel, running back Raheem Mostert and kicker Robbie Gould all had after at one point requesting a trade.
“When [guys like that] come in and say, ‘Hey, I wanna be someplace else,’ you just go, ‘No, you wanna be here,'” Lynch said. “You rely on that good foundation of a relationship you have because you understand those guys are essential to winning.”
That’s not to say, of course, that every move Lynch and Shanahan have made has worked out. Far from it.
Lynch has called trading defensive tackle DeForest Buckner the hardest move he’s made. The trade for end Dee Ford and signing of linebacker Kwon Alexander were big whiffs, and the draft is littered with selections, even near the top, that haven’t worked out.
Even an under-the-radar move like losing cornerback D.J. Reed on waivers still stings. Reed was a fifth-round pick in the 2018 draft whom the Niners believed had starter potential. Heading into his third season, Reed was dealing with a torn pectoral.
After exploring options to keep him, they waived Reed with an injury designation believing he would clear waivers and revert to their injured reserve list. The Seahawks claimed Reed, who became a starter and earned a three-year, $33 million deal from the New York Jets in the offseason.
Lynch acknowledges the misses but doesn’t wince at their mention. He knows mistakes come with the job and likens it to playing safety, where you’re the last line of defense and if you give up a big touchdown everyone knows it’s your fault.
The choice Lynch sees is to dwell on it or learn from it.
“Take note when you really covet a player, don’t try to be cute,” Lynch said. “Those things stick with you but when you’re aligned and you do things together, like everyone’s gotta own it, you know? And I think we all learned from that one.”
HANGING ABOVE LYNCH’S desk in his office at the 49ers facility is a picture of him and his family from the day he was hired. On a recent afternoon, Lynch looks up at the photo and marvels at how much his family has changed since.
After a one-year delay, Lynch’s family relocated to the Bay Area from San Diego, much to the chagrin of his daughter Lindsay. He jokes that telling your teenage daughter she has to move before her senior year of high school is a bolder move than anything he could do as general manager.
More than anything, he’s sure to credit his family for supporting his decision to leave the broadcast booth.
“I look back, it’s been fun,” Lynch said. “It’s been an adventure. It’s been worthwhile. It’s been fulfilling, I’m very appreciative of my family, very appreciative for the opportunity.”
One of the first things Lynch said after taking the job was that he didn’t know what he didn’t know. In order to learn, he took another cue from Dungy and surrounded himself with people he believed in.
Paraag Marathe, the Niners’ executive vice president of football operations, and Brian Hampton, the team’s vice president of football operations, have been instrumental in handling salary cap and contract issues, an area Lynch says is a work in progress for him.
Assistant general manager Adam Peters is his top lieutenant and player personnel director Ran Carthon has been key in assisting with scouting talent.
Both have interviewed for general manager jobs elsewhere in the past year. Either would be a candidate to replace Lynch if he left.
“We have a lot of people on the staff that we’re always trying to groom,” Shanahan said. “Not just to replace one of us someday but also to help them get opportunities in other places. We’ve got lots of good guys here that we feel confident in but John’s our guy and I hope that we don’t have to deal with that for a long time.”
By his own admission, Lynch is almost too focused on the here and now, rarely looking beyond the 24 hours in front of him. Which means he’s spent little time considering when he might be done in San Francisco’s front office.
Lynch works in a building with constant reminders of the Niners’ five world championships. He admits he doesn’t see himself walking away until he’s added at least No. 6.
“I’m still very motivated to get up and come to work every day,” Lynch said. “I’m challenged and I’m enjoying myself. I’m still motivated to get this place back to where it once was. And that’s on the top.”
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