When San Francisco 49ers starting quarterback Brock Purdy was diagnosed with a toe injury following Week 1 of the 2025 NFL season, it looked like the team was in trouble. He had just received a five-year, $265 million contract extension in May, and it had to hand over the controls of its offense to Mac Jones, who was coming off three disappointing seasons in a row.
The former 2021 first-round draft pick had been tagged a bust by plenty of people. But he has filled in well for Purdy and helped the 49ers win five of the eight games he started in. They currently have a 6-4 record and are one and a half games behind the Seattle Seahawks and Los Angeles Rams, who are tied for the best record in the NFC West.
Purdy is finally set to not only return but also start on Sunday when the Niners visit the Arizona Cardinals. One may think that Jones would be disappointed to lose his starting job, but according to head coach Kyle Shanahan, Jones is sporting a good attitude about his reassignment.
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“Honestly, it was awesome. He’s understood it the whole time. I think he had a real good idea that Brock was getting there, was going to be ready this week. It wasn’t something that I really had to have a big meeting with or anything, but I did before we went out on the practice field,” Shanahan told reporters.
Jones had been highly touted out of the University of Alabama after leading the school to a win in the 2021 College Football Playoff National Championship game. He threw for 4,500 yards and 41 touchdowns during the 2020 season, and ironically, it was thought that the 49ers would take him with the No. 3 pick in the 2021 draft.
Instead, he went to the New England Patriots at No. 15. He made the Pro Bowl and led the Patriots to their first post-Tom Brady playoff appearance as a rookie, but he wasn’t able to duplicate that type of production afterward, which led to him eventually being rendered a backup.
But in eight games with San Francisco, he has put up 2,151 passing yards and 13 touchdown passes while completing 69.6% of his pass attempts. He has played so well that there has been talk of a quarterback controversy, with some even saying that the team should stick with Jones at QB1 even after Purdy is cleared to play.
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But Purdy has more familiarity with Shanahan’s offense and is better at extending plays than Jones, and therefore, he is returning to his spot under center. Unfortunately for the Niners, they’re still very short-handed, just as they were last season when they went 6-11 a year after narrowly losing in the Super Bowl.
They will need Purdy to return to the form he showed in 2023 when he made the Pro Bowl in order to, at the very least, return to the playoffs.
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