And after Sunday’s workmanlike win over the Commanders, six days after the Ravens took them apart, I thought George Kittle’s perspective on the past week was instructive.
No, Christmas night didn’t go how anyone in Santa Clara drew it up. But what the veteran tight end saw on the tape might surprise you.
“This is something I like to point out—I learned last year in the NFC championship game, when we didn’t have a quarterback, just the fight that our guys have,” Kittle said, over the phone from the team bus. “The most important thing in football, besides winning, is your résumé, what you put on tape, what the camera sees, what the entire league gets to see when they watch your tape. You can turn on the tape from the NFC championship game last year or the Ravens game last week, and everybody just fights their tails off, offense, defense, special teams.
“When you’re part of a team like that, that mindset, no matter what’s going on and you have the will to fight, it makes it really special.”
So it was that six days after that rough night, Kittle crowded with his teammates around my buddy and columnist Mike Silver’s cell phone, to watch the Arizona Cardinals score to go ahead in Philadelphia, and inch the Niners closer to the No. 1 seed.
By then, they’d grinded out a 27–10 win in Washington. They’d taken the good and the bad of the Ravens game for what it was. And minutes later, they’d have home-field advantage in the NFC locked up.
“I saw Deebo [Samuel] hanging out with Mike—I saw he had his phone out, and I said, ,” Kittle says. “We watched it down to the last 40 seconds, and we went into the locker room and watched [the rest of] the game as a team. It was a pretty special moment.”
For a lot of reasons, the team Kittle kept calling special has a shot at more special moments.
One, of course, is a roster loaded to the brim with top-end players. Another is a coaching staff and front office that’s been poached by, and become a model for, the rest of the NFL.
But just as much, on Sunday, we saw it’s about a quarterback, too, who’s a lot more than the bus driver and this luxury liner of talent that many make him out to be.
Maybe because he came into the league as the last pick of the draft, a lot of folks were waiting for the bottom to drop out on Brock Purdy, so Christmas night was their time. He threw four picks against the Ravens and was pulled in the fourth quarter. That three of them were tipped was, well, not a huge part of the discussion—a discussion that became about the clock striking midnight on San Francisco’s Cinderella of a quarterback.
The Niners, of course, were never participating in that conversation. They’ve always had more confidence in Purdy than most fans realize. And Purdy paid that confidence off, once again, in Week 17, leading long scoring drives on the team’s first two possessions and finishing an efficient 22-of-28 for 230 yards, two touchdowns, no picks and a 124.7 passer rating, a performance that came complete with the signature playmaking flashes his critics seem to miss (like a cross-body, 17-yard touchdown throw to Brandon Aiyuk that capped a 95-yard drive in the fourth quarter).
“At this point, I don’t think any team that we play underestimates Brock,” Kittle says. “I think it’s a media thing. You don’t want the last pick in the draft, with 20-something starts under his belt, for everyone to be like, . One thing that I’ve just loved seeing from him is he’s incredibly consistent. When you’re a quarterback and you start 48 games in college, you understand how to play the quarterback position. He’s gone through the highs. He’s gone through the lows. He never gets too high and he never gets too low. He’s very even keel.
“That’s one thing that people on the outside don’t see about him. He’s the same guy every day. He can throw for four touchdowns, he can throw four interceptions. He’s the same guy every single day. He doesn’t get in his feels or anything like that.”
And clearly, the Niners don’t either. So for Kittle, and Aiyuk, Samuel, Christian McCaffrey, Nick Bosa, Fred Warner, Charvarius Ward and everyone else in the Niners’ galaxy of stars, what came Sunday was what was expected—another hard-nosed effort, like they got in Philly last January or on Christmas night against the Ravens, with a much different result.
“Losing sucks,” Kittle says. “When you have five turnovers too, you don’t really feel good as an offense. If you go back and watch the tape, we moved the ball pretty efficiently, had a lot of rushing yards. Brock was playing well aside from one bad pick and a couple tipped balls. We always talk about as a team, turnovers lead to wins. The defense didn’t get any and we gave up five. It’s kind of hard to do that, especially against a team that has Lamar Jackson on it, who is just a phenomenal football player.
“We weren’t too displeased with how we played last week, besides the turnovers. After that, we’re still a confident team. Everyone’s confident in Brock and our system. It didn’t take too long to get us off the mat.”
Clearly, they came off it swinging. And, Kittle would tell you, the tape could’ve showed you they would.
