49ers QB Brock Purdy on recovery: “Everything is going as planned”

Brock Purdy sounds confident that there will be no setbacks in his recovery from the March 10 surgery to repair the tear of the ulnar collateral ligament (UCL) in his right elbow. The San Francisco 49ers quarterback participated in several interviews on Friday as part of his partnership with Buffalo Wild Wings.

Now over a month removed from the procedure, Purdy discussed his recovery.

“It’s a process for sure,” Purdy said, via Charean Williams of Pro Football Talk. “It doesn’t matter what you hurt. If you have surgery on something, you’ve just got to let it have time to heal initially and then go from there. For me, it’s slowly getting better — a little bit every single day. Everything is going as planned. We’re on the same page just in terms of the Niners, [Dr. Keith] Meister and my physical therapist out here. Everyone’s on the same page, and everything’s going as planned. Very thankful for that. Just staying one day at a time from here.”

Purdy plans to be at the 49ers facility on Monday as the team kicks off the first phase of its offseason program. Players won’t get on the practice field until May. That’s when organized team activities (OTAs) begin.

Purdy won’t participate in those practices, though, or any others, until at least September. That’s the expected timeline for the quarterback’s recovery. Although, there is some hope inside the building that the second-year player might be able to do more sooner.

Purdy continues to wear a brace on his right arm. The quarterback might be able to start throwing again in June, three months after the surgery. From there, he will be able to ramp up his workload and may get on the practice field before the start of the 2023 regular season.

At last month’s NFL owners’ meetings, head coach Kyle Shanahan admitted that Purdy’s timeline is uncertain right now. However, the team will know more once he starts throwing in June.

“[W]e’ll see in three months if he could be ready for camp,” Shanahan told reporters, “or if not, we’ll pause and say, ‘Hey, it’s going to go a little slower.’ It might be Week 1. I think I’m hearing, at the latest, Week 4. But that’s just all estimations, and we’ll see what happens.”

There was a chance that Purdy might require a ligament reconstruction rather than a repair. That would have likely ended his hopes of a return for the 2023 season.

“Obviously, you look at the recovery time of that one versus the reconstruction,” Purdy said. “But it’s all God’s plan, and I trust that everything happens for a reason. So for it to be the repair with the internal brace was great news, and now we’re just taking it one day at a time.”

Purdy has sought advice from several sources, including Los Angeles Angels minor league physical therapist Keith Kocher, who he is rehabbing with in Arizona, and a former 49ers quarterback who underwent the same procedure.

“Obviously, I’ve got a lot of information,” Purdy said. “Keith Kocher . . . has done this rehab many times. Just picking his brain on it, seeing other guys that are going through the recovery process out here with baseball, talking to them.

“I talked to Nick Mullens as well. He went through this a couple of years ago. He had the same surgery. He had some great advice as well. It’s definitely something that I’ve talked about with some other guys and have gotten some great advice from.”