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49ers reporter, ESPN analyst exchange social media shots over Brock Purdy · Best of: Features

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  Forty Niners reporter ESPN analyst exchanged social media shots over Brock Purdy.
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  This article is being read by an automated voice generated by Everlet.
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  Longtime San Francisco Forty Niners reporter David Lombardi and one of ESPN's
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  top NFL analysts, Mina Kimes, spent nearly twenty four hours in a
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  social media spat, and if you've ever read Lombardi's social media postings
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  before, you probably already guessed the topic Niners quarterback Brock Purdy. Lombardi
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  has covered the 49ers since twenty seventeen and is in his third
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  season at the San Francisco Standard, but ever since Purdy has taken
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  over under center, Lombardi has been at the forefront of the discourse
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  around the quarterback. If there was an award for the Internet's biggest
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  Brock Believer, Lombardi would have no doubt earned it by this point.
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  So far this season, it's been hard to say Purdy hasn't earned
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  all of the praise from Lombardy or anyone else. Through three games,
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  Purdy is miles ahead of every other quarterback in QBR, the stat
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  ESPN developed to measure a quarterback's complete game performance. In week four,
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  Purdy and the Niners had a matchup with the Broncos, who have
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  been one of the NFL's better defenses in recent years. Purdy struggled
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  In the first half but had a surge in the second, leading
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  the forty niners to victory with an overall solid, if unspectacular, day,
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  completing nineteen of thirty passes for two hundred eighteen yards and two
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  touchdowns. Purdy's QBR score was sixty seven point five, perfectly fine, but
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  also by far his worst game of the season. That's not how
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  Lombardi saw it though. In an MVP Fraun Trunner season, this has
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  been Brock Purdy's best work yet, Lombardi’s wrote on X as the
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  game was ending. He's made it work down three of his top
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  wide receiver, and with Mike Evans not one hundred percent, against a
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  defense that would have likely been in the Super Bowl last season
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  had Bo Nicks not gotten hurt. As soon as Shanahan put this
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  in this quarterback's hands, Purdy took over. Nothing Lombardi said is inaccurate.
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  But about twenty minutes later, Kimes quoted Lombardi's post with a simple
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  response about what happened in Sunday's game. The Broncos are missing both
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  of their corners. Denver lost all pro cornerback Patrick Certon to an
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  ankle injury right before halftime, and fellow starter Riley Moss left shortly
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  after with a rib injury. Neither returned. As Kimes pointed out in
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  several replies, Purdy played better in other games this season, and this
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  specific game saw the Niners quarterback struggle up until both starting cornerbacks
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  left with injuries. Denver's defense is also not the same as it
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  had has been in previous years. Through four games, Denver is around
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  the middle of Then pack in points allowed ninety three yards per
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  play, five point.
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  Six, and the percentage of drives ending in offensive points forty point
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  nine percent. Those reasons are the basis for why chimes called Lombardi's
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  take Bazaar multiple times over the next few hours. All seem to
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  be settled and done with until Lombardi himself came back into the
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  fray. First, Lombardy focused simply on the Forty Niners missing offensive weapons
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  in a quote post on Sunday night, and concluded with, You do
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  not have anything close to a point. Then about twelve hours later
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  on Monday morning, Lombardy doubled back to the point. Quite frankly, it's
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  one of the most insane goalpost shifts that we've seen in Purdy
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  analysis, and that's saying something, Lombardi wrote. And it needs to be
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  called out because goalpost shifting for purdy has become a ritual that
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  no other quarterback faces. But the data is the data. Objectivity wins.
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  That opened the door for Kimes to chirp back at Lombardy with
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  two posts of her own, even though she started with Multiple people
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  have told me not to engage with you. Kymes again pointed to
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  Denver's differences and injuries on defence as important context to how the
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  game played out on Sunday. The she hit Lombardy with a reference
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  to his biggest flub. I picked the Niners to win and think
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  they're the better team, Kimes wrote. But I guess I shouldn't expect
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  intellectual honesty from a guy who stole a Reddit post claiming Brock
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  is a faster than Lamar Jackson. Back in December 2023, as Purdy
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  was in the running for NFL MVP, Lombardi posted that Purdy was
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  Drew Breeze with Lamar Jackson's ten yard burst, a notion that first
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  appeared on Reddit months prior, but Lombardi quickly deleted those posts when
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  others pointed out the lies behind the premise. Kimes referencing that Internet
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  saga apparently was enough to stop the back and forth in its
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  tracks. Lombardi went back to covering the Forty Niners news of the
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  day, and Kimes focused on her ESPN work, which included being on
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  NFL Live from New Orleans. Many others, though, enjoyed reveling in the
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  debate, including the Forty Niners reporter often considered Lombardi's de facto combatant,
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  Grant Cohn. Kimes, on the other hand, quipped that she's heard from
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  her friends around the Forty Niners not to engage with Lombardy, and
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  that she regretted the initial post, in hindsight. She even laughed at
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  how dumb this whole thing is, in a reply to the athletics
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  Mike Sando.