You wouldn’t have been laughed at in September if you predicted that the San Francisco 49ers would find their way to the NFC Championship game this season. You would have if you suggested that seventh-round rookie Brock Purdy would be their starting quarterback and would help lead them there, however.
Nevertheless, that’s where we are with the 49ers’ win over the Dallas Cowboys last night, catapulting them to an NFL-record 18th conference finals appearance, two more than anybody else (the Pittsburgh Steelers and Dallas Cowboys sharing second place).
With Purdy set to start, he will also become just the fifth rookie quarterback, among them the Pittsburgh Steelers’ Ben Roethlisberger, to start a conference final in the ‘common’ era, beginning in 1970 when the merged leagues of the NFL and AFL first played a combined postseason schedule rather than pitting champions against one another.