NFC Notes: Cooper Kupp, Kyler Murray, Brock Purdy, 49ers, Cardinals, Rams

49ers

49ers QB Brock Purdy is entering his third NFL season and has proved himself after being Mr. Irrelevant. He now has Super Bowl experience under his belt and plans to be more dominant to get his team back into position to win a championship.

“I want to be dominant,” Purdy told Mike Silver of the San Francisco Chronicle. “Not just win games and feel like, ‘Eh.’ I want to be dominant with consistent decisions and feeling like we’re the top dogs every day.”

“With as good of a team that we have, I want to get to that point where we get to the third quarter, there’s a couple of drives that are crucial, I’m on top of my stuff, we convert on third downs, and we score touchdowns and the lead just gets out of hand,” Purdy continued. “It’s having that Tom Brady kind of feeling. Late in the game, it always felt like Tom was just gonna take over and not make it close. I feel like I can get to that. I feel like that was the mindset in that second half. In the offseason, looking back on it: How can we have that mindset every game? Screw the expectations. It’s football. And for four quarters, man, we’ve gotta have that bloody mindset of going and taking it. Every down, every series, every rep. I just want to be on top of it with the starters now, and sort of set the standard here. Like, ‘Bro, let’s frickin’ be on it.’”

Cardinals

Cardinals QB Kyler Murray missed the first nine games last season rehabbing from a torn ACL but has had a full offseason to prepare for 2024. Murray is very high on their offensive core with first-round WR Marvin Harrison Jr. and TE Trey McBride and thinks they are capable of big things this year. 

“I don’t put any limitation on what this offense can be or do,” Murray said, via ESPN’s Josh Weinfuss. “I think we’re very versatile, got great skill set as far as receivers or running backs, again, me coming back healthy, I don’t feel like I even scratched the surface of what I’m capable of as far as moving around being a dual threat on the field at the back end of the season. So, like I said, I don’t put any limitation on what we can do.”

“Getting all those reps that we got, we may not have gotten if we didn’t do those things off the field because there’s the sense of urgency there. We want to hit the ground running. We are not coming out this season, despite what everybody thinks or what they’re saying, we know we want to do in this locker room, so, in order to do that, you got to put the work in.”

Rams

Rams WR Cooper Kupp had a full healthy offseason unlike last season and is using it to return to his top form. Kupp cited the reps with QB Matthew Stafford this offseason as a huge part of his preparation.

“I feel good. We got a lot of good work in this offseason,” Kupp said, via Nick Shook of NFL.com. “The best thing about this last year was just being able to feel healthy and have a full offseason of work, not just for myself in terms of working out and building my body back up but also having that time with Matthew, being able to get on the field and work through things together. Obviously, getting out here has been great. First few days of camp have been awesome, things have been clicking and looking forward to continue to build on that this year.”