Brock Purdy ‘honored’ to be named team captain in second NFL season
Sep 7, 2023, 5:45 PM | Updated: 5:50 pm
Michael Owens/Getty Images
On the precipice of his first NFL season as the Week 1 starter, Brock Purdy remained humble and honored to be selected as a team captain for the 49ers.
The San Francisco 49ers named Purdy, among five others, as team captains for the 2023 season. While it’s not unusual to have your gunslinger be named captain, Purdy’s career path has been far from normal.
Thrust into the limelight Week 13 last season, the Arizona native flourished under coach Kyle Shanahan’s system. His ability to thread the needle and extend plays wowed the NFL landscape, leaving very little thought into who the best QB is on the team.
The praise has only helped Purdy grow over the last year, remaining as humble as ever when he saw his name on the captains list.
“Yeah, very honored to be able to be voted by my teammates and peers to be able to be a captain…So, I’m very honored,” Brock Purdy said Thursday.
Purdy was honored to be named a 49ers team captain 🙌 pic.twitter.com/4l3hTDSaO5
— 49ers on NBCS (@NBCS49ers) September 8, 2023
While Purdy was thrilled to learn of the selection, he wasnt expecting it, focussed on other goals in Year 2.
“I mean, I wasn’t really thinking about it. I’ve just been trying to get better every day, come into practice and push the guys around me and be ready for Week 1. That’s really where my mindset has been. So when we came in for a meeting, we voted about stuff I was like, ‘shoot’, I sort of forgot about voting for captains and all kind of stuff. And we came back a couple days later, saw my name on the board, I was like, ‘wow, what an honor.'”
It’s also surprising because of the current circumstances, working his way back to full strength from offseason elbow surgery. And while Purdy expected to ready to go by Week 1, his ascension with the 49ers has still taken him a bit by surprise.
“I’m just so thankful,” Purdy continued. “To be able to go through what I’ve done in terms of the rehab, have all the help I’ve had…the niners, they’ve all played a huge role. And so it wasn’t just me. I had a lot of help and I’m very thankful for everyone that played a part in that. But yeah, it was a somewhat of a long six months, but at the same time, it’s like, ‘man, I felt like that was just yesterday’. So here we are getting ready for Game 1; really excited about it.”
Team captains are chosen by votes between the coaching staff and players, making it an even bigger honor for the young QB. The rest of the 49ers’ captains are veterans, with linebacker Fred Warner the second youngest captain at 26-years-old.
Point being: The whole organization feels confident that Brock Purdy showed the leadership skills to take the Red & Gold to the promise land in the near future.
“It’s when you go out and you play like he did last year, that’s what it is. I mean, it’s hard to be seen as a leader when you haven’t been out there before,” Shanahan said about Purdy. “Guys can think you’re a leader, you can act like a leader, but guys don’t follow many people who don’t produce on the field and I think that’s why he got so many votes this year because I think they believed in him and felt he was one of the leaders last year.
“He’s a hell of a player, a hell of a leader and a guy who is going to be great in this league for a long time,” running back Christian McCaffrey added.
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