Kurtenbach: Even after four years and 45 starts, the NFL doesn’t understand Brock Purdy

There is a stubborn narrative in football that insists on placing the most important and dynamic players on the field — quarterbacks — into neatly defined boxes.

There’s the devil-may-care “Gun Slinger,” the veteran (it’s always someone over 30) “Field General,” and, most damningly, the robotic, unremarkable but reliable “Game Manager.”

For the better part of his young, meteoric career, Brock Purdy has been shackled to that last, reductive label. He was unheralded coming into the league as the last pick of the 2022 draft, and he went into an offensive system in San Francisco that turned mediocre, underpowered quarterbacks into stat-stacking, game-winning quarterbacks.

Of course, he was just another Kyle Shanahan creation —an ’80s point guard: a thoughtless, egoless triggerman.

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