Does Brock Purdy's injury open the door for Tom Brady fairy tale in San Francisco?

BOSTON -- For the first time in his career, Tom Brady wasn't a winner in 2022. That is to say, he lost more than he won, which hasn't happened to him since ... his freshman year of high school?

Clearly, in that sense, Brady didn't look like Brady this past season. So there's reason to believe he may finally walk away from football -- this time actually going through with retirement.

At the same time ... the man still physically has the ability to play the most difficult position in professional sports at a very high level. He threw more passes and completed more passes than any other NFL quarterback last season. He also ranked third in the NFL in passing yards, behind only Patrick Mahomes and Justin Herbert, while tying for the eighth-most touchdown passes. It wasn't the MVP-caliber season that he had in 2021, but with a busted-up offensive line, a banged-up receiving corps and no running game to speak of, Brady showed he's still capable of doing a lot on the football field. Put him in the right circumstance ... and perhaps those numbers climb back to MVP level, and the wins follow.

That's why -- after initially seeming like a long shot -- it does feel like there might be a real chance of Brady playing for his hometown San Francisco 49ers next season.

From Brady's perspective, he's a free agent. If he wants to play, joining a team coming off an NFC title game would seemingly be ideal. Playing at home, near his parents, would provide a bit of a fairy-tale type of ending to the greatest career the sport has ever seen. And with the Niners having plenty of offensive talent complemented by the NFL's No. 1 defense, it would give him a real chance at adding an absurd eighth Super Bowl to his résumé.

(Now, might the elder statesman of the NFL have some concerns about a team that had four quarterbacks get hurt in 2022? Quite possibly. But he likely believes he could help in that regard.)

It's quite rare for a team in the NFC title game to be in the market for a new quarterback, but the 49ers may be in that spot.

Brock Purdy stepped in for the injured Jimmy Garoppolo this year and outperformed any and all expectations, going 5-0 as a starter in the regular season with 13 touchdowns and just four interceptions. He was 37-for-59 (62.7%) for 546 yards with three touchdowns and no picks -- along with 24 rushing yards and a rush TD on seven attempts -- while winning two playoff games, and many on the outside were wondering if the Niners might have stumbled into their long-term starting quarterback. Alas, Purdy suffered a torn UCL on the Niners' opening drive on Sunday in Philly, and surgery will have him out of commission for six months.

If the team planned to keep Purdy as QB1 through the spring and into training camp, that route was thrown out with the surgery news.

It all puts the 49ers in an interesting position. The team of course invested tremendous draft capital to select Trey Lance in 2021. John Lynch sent the No. 12 overall pick along with first-round picks in 2022 and 2023 as well as a third-round pick in 2022 in order to move up nine spots to get Lance just two years ago.

Clearly, Lance was the guy that Lynch and head coach Kyle Shanahan identified as the franchise QB.

Just as clearly, it hasn't panned out. Not yet, at least.

Lance was a backup to Garoppolo as a rookie, but he was the starter heading into year two. But he suffered an ankle injury in Week 2, which required surgery at the time and then another surgery in late December to remove hardware that had been inserted.

Through two seasons, Lance has been on the field for under 12 percent of San Francisco's offensive snaps. He's thrown just 102 passes, completing 54.9 percent of them while throwing five touchdowns and three interceptions. Considering Lance came out of FCS North Dakota State, and considering he only played one game in 2020 (due to COVID), he was kind of an unknown at the NFL level. Two years into his career, the 49ers still can't be sure what they have in Lance.

The 49ers may still be very interested and invested in seeing what kind of quarterback Lance is at the NFL level. But so, too, might the Tennessee Titans.

The Titans hired Ran Carthon as their GM this offseason, after he had been the 49ers' director of player personnel (2021-22) and director of pro personnel (2017-20). Lance posted some fingers-crossed emojis on Instagram when sharing news of Carthon's hiring in Tennessee, which raised some eyebrows -- both from NFL outsiders and insiders alike.

At least one unnamed NFL executive can see the Niners trading Lance, signing Brady, and keeping Purdy as the backup for the 2023 season.

"I think they will trade Trey Lance to Tennessee and then they will end up with Brady and Brady will play one year for his home team, and they will have Brock Purdy as the backup," the anonymous executive told The Athletic's Mike Sando. "That is the chatter. They have the defense already, Brady wants to win one more, and this is right up the 49ers' alley."  

It would, admittedly, be a lot.

The Titans have over $36 million of cap space dedicated to Ryan Tannehill ... but cutting or trading him after June 1 would "only" leave $9.6 million of dead money on the cap, according to Over The Cap. With Lance still on his rookie deal, the Titans could probably stomach the financial implications of moving on from Tannehill ... but they'd also have to be comfortable putting all of their eggs in the basket of the very unproven Lance.

For the 49ers, it's not slam dunk that they'd want Brady ... because they didn't want him three years ago. When Brady left New England in March of 2020, the number of teams that came calling was surprisingly low for a player of Brady's caliber. Clearly, teams weren't willing to uproot their entire quarterback situation for a quarterback entering his age 43 season. With a Super Bowl MVP trophy added to his shelf in 2020 and one of the best seasons of his entire career in 2021, Brady certainly made those teams regret their decision.

But will the past force the Niners to change course for the present and future? That's the question that can't be answered. In 2020, Lynch and Shanahan stuck with Garoppolo over Brady, despite Brady reportedly telling then-wide receivers coach Wes Welker that he'd sign in San Francisco with almost no questions asked if the 49ers would take him. The team passed.

According to Seth Wickersham's 2021 book, Shanahan and his offensive assistants watched film of every one of Brady's throws in 2019 and ... didn't love what they saw. 

"According to the book, the 49ers coaches merely liked Brady's film and concluded that Brady was only marginally better than Garoppolo at that stage of both men's careers," Matt Maiocco wrote in September 2021.

If Shanahan and his coaching staff couldn't see the talent and physical ability still evident in Brady's game in 2019 ... then they're not quite the offensive geniuses that they're cracked up to be. But they'd also be disinclined to invest in that same player three years later. Theoretically, at least.

That right there may be the biggest road block in this enchanted fantasy coming to fruition. Football Men™ aren't exactly known for admitting when they were wrong, and bringing in Brady three years later would be admitting that. It would also run the risk of being the wrong decision, as Brady will be 46 years old, which is a truly preposterous age to be while playing in the National Football League.

So it's no slam dunk. Clearly. But unlike, say, a week ago, when a QB room of Purdy and Lance seemed like a relatively safe bet, it does feel like the equation might have changed just a bit, thus keeping alive the possibility of a storybook ending for the career of Brady.