It's always nice to be acknowledged by the GOAT. This week, Brock Purdy received such praise from the man he opposed in his first NFL start, Tom Brady.
Brady on Sirius/XM’s Let’s Go with Jim Gray spoke about how impressive the beginning of Purdy's career with the 49ers has been.
“You don’t hear of guys like Brock Purdy until Brock Purdy’s doing amazing things out on the field so it’s kind of a fun story and I hope it continues for him because he seems like he’s a really humble young man and he wants to go out there and do great things. The more you kind of have that chip on your shoulder like he does, and there were not quite the expectations, it’s nice to go out there and continue to prove people wrong.”
Purdy had an opportunity to respond following 49ers practice on Thursday and remember back to that matchup with Brady last December 11, as well as the confidence beating Brady gave him moving forward.
“I mean, obviously the best quarterback of all time, knowing that we have to be like on point on our side of things, because when you get the ball in his hands, man, you never know what can happen, he is the best. And so, for us it was like, we have to make the most of every opportunity. For myself, it's like I have to be quick with my decisions, make sure I'm on the right side of the ball, making the right decisions, getting the ball to the right guys, or else if I'm just giving the ball up to this guy we may not even have a chance. So that's sort of what we were thinking the whole game. I remember we were up I think by a couple of scores and even I was still, uneasy. I had this uneasy feeling in my stomach, like, dude, we just cannot let off the pedal because Tom Brady's obviously had all these comebacks in his career and his life and stuff, so that's where I was always at. Just one more, one more, one more, every drive. And so, that was my mindset with that. But in terms of the confidence moving forward, yeah, he's the best. And to be able to say we beat Tom Brady, man, it was, for us, it was huge. I think at that point in the season we were just getting onto a roll of winning and obviously we were able to get on a winning streak going into the playoffs. So, it was huge for all of us. And then including myself, my first start, and yeah, it was huge.”
Purdy, who has still yet to lose a game he hasn't finished healthy during his NFL career, will look to keep things rolling as the 5-0 49ers take on the Browns in Cleveland on Sunday morning, and improve upon his 12-1 record as a starter.