Chris Conley was told that he should think about hanging it up.
But with the 49ers' season on the brink, Saturday night, Brock Purdy looked to him.
San Francisco embarked upon what would become a game-winning drive with 6:18 on the clock, down by four, with the NFC Championship on the line.
Having trudged upfield from their own 31-yard line to the Packers' 43-yard line with no play longer than 10 yards, the trudging suddenly stopped. Purdy found Conley on a 17-yard out route, the longest play of the drive.
The reception was monumental, moving San Francisco to the Green Bay 26-yard line just ahead of the two-minute warning.
Five plays later, Christian McCaffrey punched in the game-winning touchdown.
Conley's play wasn't the only one of consequence, but it was the biggest chunk, and carried with it a feeling. It was a heavy catch. It lifted the weight of worry from the 49ers back to the Packers. It held a message that this comeback was real. And it came in brutally slick field conditions that Conley said weren't helped by wearing alternative cleats.
Conley thanked Purdy for finding him and said that going into that drive, the 49ers felt like they had an advantage on out-breakers against Packers corners who were sitting inside.
All that said... Conley may or not actually remember the play.
"Right now, it's a little bit of a blur," Conley said. "I need to go watch it. The competitive juices and the adrenaline were so high."
Of course it's a blur.
Conley didn't have a catch this season before the final, "meaningless" regular season game, in which he had three, for 69 yards.
To have put himself in a situation to catch that pass from Purdy was, yes, a result of Deebo Samuel being injured. But it was not just happenstance. It was earned, and it took Conley having to embrace a new chapter of his career.
After a 775-yard, 5 TD peak in 2019 with the Jaguars, his production declined. By 2021, the former third-round pick caught just 22 passes for 323 yards, then four for 46 yards in 2022.
He came to the 49ers this offseason no longer as a prospect, starter, or even guaranteed depth piece, but as a veteran desperate to prove he still had more to give to the game. He had to trust his own voice above the others asking whether there actually was anything left to give.
"I definitely have grappled with it," Conley said. "I had a lot of people telling me that maybe it was time to move on, or do something different. But when I came here, I just asked for an opportunity to compete and to do anything, and they were gracious enough to give me an opportunity on special teams, and I got an opportunity and then I got the job."
He took a call from John Lynch and Kyle Shanahan this offseason. They offered no illusions about his role in an offense with four receiving spots already cemented.
That was fine with him. Conley asked only for a chance to compete: at least one more chance to quiet outside voices telling him his time had run out.
"In this business, there's a lot of voices, and a lot of negative things," Conley said. "But that happens. There's a lot of noise, and you gotta ignore it. You got to focus on what's important. And when I was given the opportunity here, I just put everything into it, put everything into it for these guys and for this team."
That ability to remain focused amidst a din of opinions and other pressures is why Conley got his chance.
His job, explicitly, is to know every receiver's role. When someone goes down, he's ready.
That sounds an awful lot like Purdy's responsibility last season, before he took the reins as the starter.
"We have complicated game plans, and my job is to study everybody else's job," Conley said. "And so, when things are complicated, sometimes they call on me to do it because they know that I know it. Sometimes you don't know going into a week what you're going to be playing, and you find out during the game, kind of like today."
He said he didn't feel doubt in that final drive for the same reason that he overcame any doubts about the future of his career. Conley proactively works on settling his mind.
"It's funny, because when you're on a team like this, the things that I work on mentally is making sure that my mind is in the right place all the time," Conley said. "So I'm constantly checking myself on the sideline, making sure I'm thinking about the right things and that I'm in the right frame of mind.
"And every single time that your mind seems to deviate or shift, it's time for you to take a deep breath and reset. But on that last drive, the look in everybody's eyes — they wanted it. They wanted that moment to be on them. So, I don't think [there was any doubt]."
Embracing that moment, and being ready for it, whenever it came, is why Conley carved out a role for himself.
He worked on special teams, and as a blocker. He had a major block to spring Christian McCaffrey's first touchdown, and said Shanahan and Lynch saw him as being "physical" and "constantly competitive," two traits that match the 49ers' ethos.
So rather than choose to view his supplementary role — he spent most of the season on the practice squad before being signed to the roster on December 9 — as something to be in denial about, Conley said he embraced it.
"It's no secret that that's kind of been my role on the last couple of teams," Conley said. "That I've been an, 'emergency, put him wherever you need to,' and it's something that I haven't shied away from.
"I've just leaned into it, and that's kind of the same thing that they asked me to do here. And I don't think it's a negative thing. I think that when someone trusts you to do that, they believe in not only your physical ability, but the mental capacity every week to download that much information. It takes time. It's not easy, but it's kept me in the locker room. So I'm blessed to have an opportunity to do it."
The 49ers' "emergency, put him wherever you need to,"