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Why the 49ers Could Bench Brock Purdy at the Bye Week

So much is at stake for Purdy this weekend.

Grant Cohn

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Brock Purdy won the first 10 regular season games of his career. But if he loses Sunday to the Bengals, that would be three losses in a row, and the 49ers just might have to bench him.

So much is at stake for Purdy this weekend.

He made things look so easy for the first 10 games of his career. He barely broke a sweat. But now he has lost a couple key teammates on his offense, and suddenly he has played so poorly in back to back losses that he has been one of the primary reasons the 49ers lost both games.

So if he plays poorly against the Bengals and is one of the main reasons they lose to Cincinnati, the 49ers might have to turn to Sam Darnold after the Bye week.

Of course, none of us expect Purdy to struggle against the Bengals -- most people still think he's a good quarterback. But most people thought he would beat the Browns and the Vikings. Instead, he threw three picks in those games, including two at the end of the Vikings loss when he had opportunities to bring the 49ers back from behind and be a hero.

The 49ers pass the ball less frequently than just about every team in the NFL -- they don't want their quarterback to make mistakes and lose games. Kyle Shanahan feels they can win in spite of their quarterback.

Purdy gave away the game against the Vikings with his interceptions at the end. If he does that against the Bengals, don't be surprised if the 49ers say his arm hurts and they bench him for a while.

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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.

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