San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy will start Sunday against the Jacksonville Jaguars after missing two games with a toe injury, head coach Kyle Shanahan told reporters Friday.
Shanahan said Purdy “looked good” in practice this week and got to do “a lot more” than he did last week, ramping up to the undefeated 49ers’ Week 4 home matchup against the 2-1 Jaguars.
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Shanahan suggested he wasn’t surprised Purdy was cleared as early as he was to return from the turf toe variant the 25-year-old suffered during a season-opening win over the Seattle Seahawks.
“I mean, that was what we were hoping for,” Shanahan said of Purdy’s Week 4 return. “We knew it could go either way, but the fact that we even considered him to be an emergency guy last week — just talking to him on Monday and Tuesday, and he wasn’t full on Wednesday or Thursday, but you could tell it was going that direction.
“As long as he woke up today feeling good, we kind of expected it.”
Shanahan was then asked if he feels good about Purdy’s level of preparedness to face the Jaguars.
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“Yeah, definitely,” Shanahan said. “He’s always prepared. He’s played in games with zero practice, and he got, for the most part, all of it this week.”
In Purdy’s two-game absence, backup Mac Jones led the 49ers to a pair of wins, a 26-21 victory over the New Orleans Saints and a 16-15 victory over the Arizona Cardinals.
Jones, a 2021 Pro Bowler during his rookie season with the New England Patriots, tossed three touchdowns against the Saints and then orchestrated a 10-play, 63-yard, game-winning drive against the Cardinals that ended in a 35-yard Eddy Piñeiro field goal as time expired.
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Purdy will sub back in with his 49ers leading the NFC West with a 3-0 record.
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Not only did Purdy injure his toe in Week 1, but he also picked up a left shoulder injury — that issue, however, wasn’t as serious.
That day in Seattle, he bounced back from a pair of interceptions and delivered a game-winning touchdown pass to tight end Jake Tonges with about 90 seconds left for a pivotal divisional win.
It was a resilient statement from the 2022 NFL Draft’s “Mr. Irrelevant,” who led the 49ers to a Super Bowl appearance in the 2023 season and signed a five-year, $265 million extension in May after San Francisco’s injury-riddled 6-11 finish last season.
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This is the first time in Purdy’s career that he’s dealt with a toe injury. He said last week that he’s gained a new appreciation for how healthy toes factor into quarterback play.
“I went back and watched film and just saw how explosive you really need to be at quarterback,” Purdy explained at the time. “You don’t really think about it, but getting back from the line of scrimmage in your drop, your handoffs, carrying out a fake, bootlegs and scrambling, obviously you need your toes to be able to go in and out of those cuts, and it’s something that you can’t really mask.
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“You got to be all in and healthy to be able to play the position of quarterback.”
Recovering quickly from an injury that was originally reported as a potential two-five week setback, Purdy’s good to go again.
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