The Similarities and Differences Between Brock Purdy and Joe Montana

Most people who draw this comparison never actually saw Montana play -- you'd have to be in your 40s to remember him.

Grant Cohn | Oct 10, 2023

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San Francisco 49ers

Statistically, Brock Purdy has had the best start ever to a career by an NFL quarterback. He has been so good, he already has drawn comparisons to the greatest 49ers quarterback ever, Joe Montana.

Most people who draw this comparison never actually saw Montana play -- you'd have to be in your 40s to remember him. Fortunately, my father, Lowell Cohn, covered Montana's entire career with the 49ers. Here's what my dad had to say about Purdy and Montana.

LOWELL COHN: "I really enjoy watching Brock Purdy play, and he's very good. I don't think he's Joe Montana yet. Now maybe a lot of these people haven't seen Joe play. Joe won four Super Bowls. That's a big deal. So I think we ought to tap the brakes on Brock Purdy being in the Joe Montana class or the Steve Young class for a little while yet."

Q: Could you compare their skill sets?

LOWELL COHN: "I'm not going to put down Brock Purdy because I love how he plays, and he has certain qualities like Joe. What Joe did, he put the ball exactly where it needed to go. If he were throwing to Dwight Clark, he put it between the 8 and the 7. Every time. So his ball was perfect to catch. Years later, Bill Walsh was watching tape of Joe, and he called me and said, 'I'm watching Joe again and he put every ball where it had to be.' And you could hear had fallen in love with Joe all over again years later. Brock Purdy does that some of the time. He doesn't do it all the time. Joe did it all the time. People say Purdy's arm isn't all that strong but he makes up for it. Joe's arm wasn't all that strong, but it was stronger than Purdy's. In addition, I saw any number of games where Joe was behind, and Joe -- not always -- but most of the time, reached the crisis moment and was a winner. We haven't seen that in Purdy yet."

My dad makes a good point -- Montana created his legacy by coming from behind to win big games. Purdy almost never plays from behind, but he will eventually.

Then we'll see how much Joe Cool he has in him.

Published Oct 10, 2023

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.