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Four bold thoughts, starting with …
1. The 49ers’ Quarterback Discourse will never go away, but these days it’s boring and meaningless to go nuts over Brock Purdy’s one bad game every two months or so and ignore everything else.
If he’s healthy, Purdy is the starting QB. Even when he’s less than 100%, as he’s been for almost all of this season and will be for the rest of it with that nagging toe injury, Purdy is clearly the 49ers’ best QB.
And through the toe issues, Purdy is still winning games (4-1 this season as the starter, versus Mac Jones’ 5-3) and still putting up decent statistics (his 87.7 passer rating is meh, but his 68.5 QBR would rank him fifth in the league if he had enough playing time to qualify).
Oh, he also helped lead the 49ers to the Super Bowl less than two years ago and is 27-14 as a starter, with a 102.7 career passer rating — which, as I keep reminding everybody, lands him above Aaron Rodgers, Lamar Jackson, Patrick Mahomes, and every other qualifier in that category. (Purdy won’t have enough pass attempts to qualify until next season.)
But yes, Purdy had a lousy game against Carolina two weeks ago. And guess what: He bounced back with a crisp, winning performance in terrible weather while dodging Myles Garrett on Sunday.
It’s important to note that the Cleveland performance (and victory) is what’s normal about Purdy as a 49er, not the three-interception sloppiness in the win over the Panthers. The stats tell us this. Our eyes tell us this too.
The most tedious part of the Purdy-must-go bellowing from the fan base and many others once or twice a year is not that it can be proved wrong so frequently and clearly, it’s that Purdy is never, ever getting benched while he’s in his prime. Not while Kyle Shanahan calls the shots and not if logic prevails in the 49ers’ offices and locker room. Which it does.
You are free to carp about Jones being better than Purdy, or whatever, but that ignores the fact that Shanahan and his staff know slightly more about quarterbacking — and what they want from their QB — than the average angry fan and blogger.
Maybe even more important: It ignores that Shanahan is tougher on his QBs than everybody else. It’s not like he’s ever resembled Jim Tomsula bumbling through the Colin Kaepernick/Blaine Gabbert mess in 2015 or Arizona’s indecision on Kyler Murray for years, or everything that has happened with the Cleveland QBs for decades.
Shanahan was always evaluating Jimmy Garoppolo — even during great seasons — pulled the plug on Trey Lance after trading first-round picks to acquire him, and early in this era, ejected from Brian Hoyer and C.J. Beathard just about exactly when he had to.
They’ve made some personnel mistakes over the years, but there is zero history of Shanahan and John Lynch staying with players — especially QBs — who aren’t performing well while somebody better sits and waits.
I am not trying to diminish what Jones accomplished in his eight games. There might not be a QB2 in this league that could’ve won five games in that situation. But also, Jones had Christian McCaffrey at full steam in those games (as Purdy has now), and that does make a difference.
Mac Jones is 5-3 as the 49ers’ starter this season, while Purdy is 4-1. | Source: Amber Pietz/The Standard
Purdy is 22-7 when McCaffrey is also in the starting lineup — which makes Purdy 5-7 without McCaffrey. I doubt Jones’ record would be better in that situation, let’s put it that way.
Shanahan and Lynch made their decision on Purdy a while ago and locked it in a concrete vault when they gave him a $265 million deal last summer. Purdy will have another bad game at some point, but that will change nothing.
Heaven forbid, he might even have two bad games in a row or even two in the same month. But could the QB Discourse Superstars maybe save their loudest complaints for the moment that actually happens?
Today
Tuesday, Nov. 25
Friday, Nov. 21
2. Stanford’s Andrew Luck hired Tavita Pritchard, the anti-Lane Kiffin, which has major plusses but potential minuses.
That was the most Stanford-y of Stanford news conferences Tuesday, with the two former Cardinal QBs who run this team joking; beaming to the assemblage of dignitaries, athletic department employees, players, and media; and saying very Stanford things about the community and history of the program.
I expect Cal’s presser to introduce, presumably, alum Tosh Lupoi as coach will feel similar. Dream job. Surrounded by friends and family. Heartfelt reminders that all that’s necessary is maximizing everything that’s great about the school and program.
I’m all for these kinds of non-transactional hires. When they work, there’s nothing better. And you usually don’t have to worry about the coach leveraging every moment and every victory for more money or power and inevitably leaving for a better opportunity anyway.
But Kiffin got that leverage and had that opportunity to bolt from Ole Miss for LSU because he’s such a valuable commodity — he could be in position to jilt a team on the path to the College Football Playoff only because he got Ole Miss to that elevated spot.
Tavita Pritchard, left, and Andrew Luck answer questions Tuesday. | Source: Amber Pietz/The Standard
We’ll see if Pritchard and Lupoi can do anything close with their beloved alma maters. It’s not impossible. It’s just very hard, given the situations at both schools.
I think Lupoi has a better shot because of his legendary recruiting skills (and Cal is not without talent), his experience at Alabama and Oregon, his probable stylistic and philosophical alignment with GM Ron Rivera, and the size and passion of the Cal fan base.
I also think Pritchard has a shot at it, because he seems to be a born leader, is obviously close to his old teammate Luck, and doesn’t have to spend a millisecond getting up to speed on Stanford’s unique ways.
A Pritchard statement that I know hit a sweet spot: “One thing that we were most proud of in our time as players, the misconception about Stanford student-athletes: ‘They’re silver spoon, intellectual, so there’s a softness to it.’ When that actually couldn’t be further from the truth. There is a grit and a toughness that exists in Stanford people that we will lean into, because that’s consistent, that’s something that I know in my bones. We’ll use that. That will be something that we will have a physical, tough element that we will impose our will.”
But a general counterpoint: Who were the best coaches in recent Cal and Stanford memory? Jeff Tedford and Jim Harbaugh, who were relative outsiders to both programs. And yes, Harbaugh’s tacit deal with Stanford was about as transactional as you could get — which benefited everybody.
3. The Warriors need De’Anthony Melton, but they’re properly wary of putting too much on his imminent return.
We’ve been talking about Melton’s pending role for weeks, and the Warriors have been talking about it too. Will he start next to Stephen Curry? Take minutes from Brandin Podziemski or Moses Moody? Or — gasp — Jonathan Kuminga? Help run the second unit with Jimmy Butler? Give them the lift they need during these early-winter doldrums?
But now that Melton is set to return at some point in the upcoming road trip, it’s more than fair for Draymond Green and others to warn against expecting Melton, by himself, to turn the tide for this 11-11 team (which might be 11-14 by the time this Steph-less trip is over).
The considered comparison: Dennis Schroder after he was acquired (for Melton) in the middle of the last season, then started missing shots and kept missing them, eventually playing only 24 games (and shooting 37.5%) with the Warriors before he was traded himself in the Butler deal whirlwind last February.
De’Anthony Melton played six games with the Warriors last season before tearing his ACL. | Source: Joshua Gateley/Getty Images
“I don’t want to put much pressure on him,” Draymond said of Melton after Tuesday’s loss to the Thunder. “I’ve never said this, but I think Dennis Schroder was probably put in one of the worst positions a player can be put in. It’s not that Dennis Schroder couldn’t work here, but we were so desperate, and it was almost like everyone expected him to come in and be the savior.
“So he never got a fair shot. … Here in San Francisco, we never truly got to see the player that Dennis really is. There was so much thrown at him that, if I’m honest, it wasn’t quite right, but it’s just what it was. … I don’t want to see that happen to Melt. A, the guy’s coming back off an ACL injury. That takes time. … But I don’t want to see him get thrown in this fire of, like, oh man, he’s got to save the day, that’s on him. No, that’s not fair to him.”
Melton was re-signed for the minimum salary, as Draymond noted. At least until he’s had time to fully get his legs, that should put Melton in a group of guys who can give the Warriors something — starting with Podziemski, Buddy Hield, and Moody.
If Melton immediately can play defense, handle the ball, and pop up with a 15-point game once a week in that mix, he’ll add a lot. When and if he can do it regularly, he should help win more games. Not as a savior. But another rock in the rotation that could use one.
4. I understand the Giants being budget conscious when they’re paying big money to Rafael Devers, Willy Adames, and Matt Chapman. But if they wait until next offseason for the perfect free agent, they might not be good enough for that guy to want to come here.
The Giants had a chance to really push it after the 2021 season — they’d just put up 107 wins, and though they were hit hard by Buster Posey’s surprise retirement, they had some extra money to spend because of it.
They could’ve thrown cash around to players who wanted to join a winner. They could’ve re-signed Kevin Gausman to whatever he wanted. They could’ve put the pedal down and gone after the Dodgers.
That did not happen, of course. Farhan Zaidi let Gausman go, re-signed Brandon Crawford to a regrettable two-year extension (that had to be done for such an important player coming off a career year), and otherwise stood pat.
And the next offseason, when Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto were reviewing free-agent offers, the Dodgers were coming off a 111-win season (following 106 in 2021), and the Giants had just finished 81-81. We know what happened next: Ohtani and Yamamoto signed with the Dodgers, who won the 2024 and 2025 World Series. The Giants … did not do any of that.
Buster Posey is trying to turn the Giants into a contender again, but the team might not be willing to spend what it takes to sign top free-agent pitchers. | Source: Amber Pietz/The Standard
So I get the logic of the Giants staying out of the hot starting-pitching market in free agency, including Japanese star Tatsuya Imai, as The Athletic’s Andrew Baggarly reported last week; I agree with chairman Greg Johnson and, apparently, Posey, that these are risky deals that can obliterate any reasonable payroll plan.
I understand it if the Giants’ brass doesn’t see the right match at the top of this year’s market and prefers to explore the trade market now and next July and go back heavy into free agency next offseason.
I get it if Posey and Johnson consider acquiring Devers and Adames as essentially their big free-agent moves for a several-year interval. The Giants are rich, but they’re not the Dodgers, Yankees, or Mets — they can’t just keep adding $180-million-plus players year after year.
But they can’t just sit around, like they did after 2021, and count on Tony Vitello and a lot of wishing to lift them into contention with the Dodgers. They have to get aggressive. They have to spend — at least another $30 million or $40 million on the 2026 payroll, I’d say.
Even if the perfect free agents aren’t available this cycle, the Giants have to wade into the market just to show the Next Great Free Agent that they’re serious about this and good enough to picture a run of World Series trips.
The Giants didn’t do that after 2021. They’ve regretted it ever since.