Does Brock Purdy have Arm Fatigue?

Remember, Purdy started the season hot after not playing much in the preseason. And his arm seemed fresh.
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Sometimes it's easy to forget that Brock Purdy had major elbow surgery in March.

He leads the NFL in so many passing statistics, that injury seems like ancient history and something that wouldn't affect Purdy anymore. But does it affect him? It's worth investigating.

Remember, Purdy started the season hot after not playing much in the preseason. And his arm seemed fresh. And he won his first five games without breaking a sweat. But in the fifth win, a Sunday Night game against the Cowboys, announcer Troy Aikman casually mentioned during the broadcast that Purdy told him his arm hasn't fully recovered yet.

Then Purdy lost three in a row and threw five picks in those games. Suddenly, his arm didn't look so good. He didn't have the zip to fit passes into tight windows, and so he was throwing interceptions with the game on the line.

Then Purdy had a bye week, which he said he used to rest his arm. Meaning he didn't throw. After the bye week, his arm seemed fresh again, and he eviscerated the Jaguars and the Buccaneers. He seemed back.

Then Purdy had a play on Thanksgiving, which was a short week. He had only a few days of rest. And he didn't play his best. He posted a passer rating of just 86.7 and threw a pick-six despite leading the entire game and playing an opponent that hardly showed up. It's possible his arm was tired on a short week.

This week, he'll have extra time to rest and prepare for the Eagles, which should bode well for his arm. But unless the 49ers earn a first-round bye in the playoffs, arm fatigue could be a recurring issue for Purdy this season.


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Grant Cohn
GRANT COHN

Grant Cohn has covered the San Francisco 49ers daily since 2011. He spent the first nine years of his career with the Santa Rosa Press Democrat where he wrote the Inside the 49ers blog and covered famous coaches and athletes such as Jim Harbaugh, Colin Kaepernick and Patrick Willis. In 2012, Inside the 49ers won Sports Blog of the Year from the Peninsula Press Club. In 2020, Cohn joined FanNation and began writing All49ers. In addition, he created a YouTube channel which has become the go-to place on YouTube to consume 49ers content. Cohn's channel typically generates roughly 3.5 million viewers per month, while the 49ers' official YouTube channel generates roughly 1.5 million viewers per month. Cohn live streams almost every day and posts videos hourly during the football season. Cohn is committed to asking the questions that 49ers fans want answered, and providing the most honest and interactive coverage in the country. His loyalty is to the reader and the viewer, not the team or any player or coach. Cohn is a new-age multimedia journalist with an old-school mentality, because his father is Lowell Cohn, the legendary sports columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle from 1979 to 1993. The two have a live podcast every Tuesday. Grant Cohn grew up in Oakland and studied English Literature at UCLA from 2006 to 2010. He currently lives in Oakland with his wife.