Is Brock Purdy the Leader of the 49ers Offense?

Most of the time a team has a Pro Bowl quarterback, that player is the leader of the team, or at least the offense.
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Brock Purdy is a Pro Bowl quarterback and an MVP candidate, but is he the leader of the 49ers offense?

Most of the time a team has a Pro Bowl quarterback, that player is the leader of the team, or at least the offense. Patrick Mahomes is the Chiefs' leader, no question. Josh Allen is the Bills' leader, no question. Lamar Jackson is the Ravens' leader, no question.

There is a question about Purdy.

And it's not about his ability to lead. He clearly is a natural leader. He holds himself and his teammates to the highest standards. Calls himself out after bad performances and calls out his teammates in the huddle when they're not paying attention, like when he was a rookie and he told George Kittle to shut up. That was leadership.

And when Purdy blamed himself for the Super Bowl loss even though he didn't have to and wasn't at fault, that was leadership.

Purdy is exactly the leader the 49ers' offense needs because he's humble, honest and accountable. But he's not the leader of the offense.

Kyle Shanahan is the leader, and he always will be the leader until he lets go and empowers his Pro Bowl quarterback to take over and be the man. Shanahan won't even let Purdy call audibles or change protections at the line of scrimmage. As opposed to Andy Reid, who lets Mahomes call plays when he wants to.

The Chiefs are Mahomes' team, while the 49ers still are Shanahan's team. He won't win a Super Bowl until it's Purdy's team.


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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.