All 49ers

Kyle Juszczyk Says Brock Purdy Has Mastered the 49ers Playbook

Few people on the 49ers know their offensive playbook better than Kyle Juszczyk.

Grant Cohn

Feb 8, 2024; Las Vegas, NV, USA; San Francisco 49ers fullback Kyle Juszczyk (44) during a press conference before Super Bowl LVIII at Hilton Lake Las Vegas Resort and Spa. Mandatory Credit: Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports
Feb 8, 2024; Las Vegas, NV, USA; San Francisco 49ers fullback Kyle Juszczyk (44) during a press conference before Super Bowl LVIII at Hilton Lake Las Vegas Resort and Spa. Mandatory Credit: Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports / Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports
In this story:

SANTA CLARA -- Few people on the 49ers know their offensive playbook better than Kyle Juszczyk.

He has been on the team since 2017. And he went to Harvard. So he knows the playbook front to back. He has gone through eight offseason installations. He could be a coach on this team tomorrow if he were to retire today. That's how thoroughly he understands Kyle Shanahan's cutting-edge offensive system.

Meanwhile, Brock Purdy has gone through merely three offseasons. And he's still just 24 years old. And yet, according to Juszczyk, Purdy knows the 49ers offense as well as anyone on the team.

"His understanding of the playbook has really grown to where he can point out where other people make mistakes very quickly," Juszczyk said. "I love on third down when I'm in protection in the backfield, he'll let me know as soon as we get lined up that I'm going to be hot. Little things like that, you can just tell he has a full understanding of what's going on. It's not just what he has to know. Now he's understanding what everyone else has to know."

Clearly, Purdy is a cerebral quarterback who takes his craft seriously, as opposed to Jimmy Garoppolo, who never seemed to have more than a rudimentary understanding of Kyle Shanahan's offensive system. When Garoppolo was the 49ers quarterback, Juszczyzk was the smartest player on the field. Now that Purdy is the quarterback, he's the brains of the operation -- no offense to Juszczyk.

Published
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.

Home/News