Widely respected Kansas City Chiefs defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo spoke highly about San Francisco 49ers second-year quarterback Brock Purdy after the Chiefs earned a 25-22 overtime win in Super Bowl LVIII last Sunday.
“They were behind in those other playoff games and he didn’t flinch. … He didn’t flinch in this game,” Spagnuolo said about Purdy during an appearance on the ‘ALL NFL’ podcast that’s part of the ALLCITY Network, as shared by Tzvi Machlin of The Spun. “(Chiefs linebacker) Nick Bolton hit him once right after he got rid of the ball. … A couple other shots that he took and I don’t think he got flustered at all.”
Purdy engineered a late game-winning drive in San Francisco’s 24-21 divisional playoff win over the Green Bay Packers. The 24-year-old then helped the 49ers erase a 24-7 halftime deficit en route to guiding his club to a thrilling 34-31 victory over the Detroit Lions in the NFC Championship Game.
Debates regarding whether or not Purdy is merely a “game manager” and not an elite quarterback will likely continue as long as rumors suggesting that San Francisco could look at signing a veteran persist.
Spagnuolo, now a four-time Super Bowl-winning coordinator for his career, left little doubt he was impressed by the poise shown by the final pick of the 2022 NFL Draft on the sport’s biggest stage.
“But I kinda felt that he wouldn’t,” Spagnuolo added about Purdy not getting “flustered” in the Super Bowl. “Like, I didn’t go in there thinking, ‘OK, this is a young quarterback, let’s do this and we’ll get him out of his game’, because he had proved it to me in those other games that wasn’t the case.”
In total, Purdy completed 23-of-38 passes for 255 yards with one touchdown in Super Bowl LVIII. Such numbers weren’t good enough to prevent Kansas City superstar Patrick Mahomes from producing a game-winning drive in the overtime period when the Chiefs trailed 22-19.
Spagnuolo isn’t the only household name heaping praise on Purdy. Earlier this week, free-agent quarterback and current ESPN analyst Robert Griffin III named Purdy “the best quarterback in the NFL this year.”
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