Niners QB Brock Purdy on playoff struggles: 'It's a new game' - ESPN

SANTA CLARA, Calif. — As San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy went back and watched his performance in Saturday night's playoff win against the Green Bay Packers, he wanted to understand why he struggled. He didn't, however, want to dwell on it.

With the Detroit Lions coming to town for Sunday's NFC Championship Game showdown, Purdy isn't too worried about what's happened in the recent — or distant — past.

«It doesn't matter if you played good or bad, like I don't take really any of that with you the next week,» Purdy said. «It's a new game. It's a new scheme. It's a new environment. Everything about it is new. It's almost like you've got to clean the slate, learn from the mistakes, build off of the good things that you've done… I think that's where the great ones really separate themselves from the others.»

This week, Purdy is preparing for his second NFC Championship Game start. He's doing so on the heels of a rain-soaked performance against the Packers in which he struggled for most of the game before authoring his first fourth-quarter, winning touchdown drive of the season.

Purdy said Wednesday that he made some decisions early in the game that made him a little tentative as the game went on. Most notably, his second pass was thrown right to Packers safety Darnell Savage. Savage didn't haul it in, though, and the Niners avoided an interception that could have gone for a touchdown.

The takeaway for Purdy moving forward is to be more cognizant of taking checkdowns when the big play isn't there. He acknowledged Wednesday that he probably was looking for the big play too often against Green Bay.

«I wouldn't put it all on just Brock,» coach Kyle Shanahan said. «Brock did some really good things and that would've