SANTA CLARA, Calif. — You want to know who held Brock Purdy and the San Francisco 49ers accountable Saturday, with the clock running out, the rain coming down, Deebo Samuel out injured and the Green Bay Packers just a play or two from a monumental playoff upset?
You want to know who assigned responsibility and demanded that the 49ers fight through their game-long struggles? Who laid out all the potential consequences? That would be Purdy and every other member of the 49ers, who got themselves into this spot with one of their most baffling performances of this season.
They got the ball back with 6:13 left in the game after a Packers field-goal miss. They 49ers trailed by four points. They needed a touchdown. And they knew this was probably their last realistic chance to figure out how to avoid a horrendous loss in this divisional-round playoff game. So once the offense got into the huddle, Trent Williams gave a mini-speech.
“I just told them, hey, man, with six minutes left, this might be the last time we get the ball. And if we don’t do something with it, this could be the last time we’re in this huddle together,” Williams recalled. “So whatever you’ve got, just bring it. Bring it the next play and then bring it the play after that and then let the rest take care of itself.”
They all felt it. The 49ers were at Levi’s Stadium, set up as NFC favorites to get to the Super Bowl, and they absolutely felt it. What happened next: Purdy broke out of his funk and started completing passes, Brandon Aiyuk made a huge diving catch on third down, Purdy scrambled inside the Packers’ 10-yard line and finally Christian McCaffrey bolted in for a 6-yard touchdown that put the 49ers ahead at last. Then Dre Greenlaw finished off the 49ers’ 24-21 victory by intercepting Jordan Love’s ill-advised across-his-body heave in the final minute.
But oh yeah, the 49ers felt it. And nobody felt it more than Purdy. Almost an hour after the game, you could tell they still felt it — all the adrenaline, all the disappointment over playing so haphazardly in such a big game, all the significance and all the relief. The 49ers saw their playoff lives flash before their eyes Saturday … and thanks to those last handful of plays, they’re still alive with a berth in the NFC Championship Game at Levi’s on Jan. 28, facing the winner of Sunday’s Lions-Buccaneers game.
They live. And they know a little more about themselves now than they did after all their easy victories this season. (But so do their opponents.)
“At a point, you’re down and you’ve gotta find a way,” Purdy said. “It’s the fourth quarter, it’s the NFL. Obviously, we’re in the postseason now. We were all, like, all right, this is it. This is our season. For us to capitalize on that was huge. For all of us.
“Obviously for myself as a quarterback, it’s good for confidence and all that. But we have too many good players on this team, so many players that are difference-makers. We’ve got a great defense. For us to not find a way, it’s not right. So for us to finally have a game like this and pull through it was huge for all of us.”
Nick Bosa flat-out said that the 49ers needed a game like this and noted that they lost all their close games this regular season and won all the blowouts. And more than anybody, Purdy needed something like this. Of course, the 49ers never want to see Purdy wobble for three-plus quarters the way he did Saturday. The 49ers never want to get outplayed like the way the Packers outplayed them for most of this game.
But the 49ers also needed to see Purdy rise up from a struggle and deliver. They needed him not to just be a great front-runner. They needed him to dig out from a hole and win this dang game, and he went 6-of-7 on that last drive, looking…
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