SANTA CLARA, Calif. — In the span of a few seconds, Brock Purdy stepped into the same world of hurt that Bo Nix has called home all offseason.
A handful of 11-on-11 reps into Thursday’s joint practice with the Broncos, San Francisco head coach Kyle Shanahan’s freewheeling offense started spinning its wheels in the trenches. John Franklin-Myers and D.J. Jones gobbled up a handoff to 49ers stud Christian McCaffrey. Zach Allen and Levelle Bailey sniffed out another toss. Dondrea Tillman chased Purdy around on a rollout. Bodies shuffled off the turf, and it seemed for a moment that Shanahan’s attack would draw a reprieve, Purdy with a chance to attack third-stringers.
Didn’t help.
Immediately, Eyioma Uwazurike and rookie Sai’vion Jones deflated the pocket in on Purdy for a would-be sack. Immediately, the next play, Franklin-Myers trotted in and blew through an offensive lineman for another would-be sack, roaring at his conquest.
After the Broncos’ frontmen pillaged San Francisco for the better part of two hours, Castle Rock native and 49er Christian McCaffrey stood in front of reporters and confirmed what Denver’s offense has known for a few months.
“Yeah, that’s a good D-line,” McCaffrey said, blank. “Really good D-line, and good defense.”
Too good, for their own good. The Broncos brought in six defensive linemen on their initial 53-man roster in 2024. They’ll be hard-pressed to make those same cuts this camp with a group that proved it can capably rotate three-deep against a dynamic San Francisco offense Thursday.
Jordan Jackson, an Air Force product who made Denver’s roster in a breeze last year, is now on the bubble. He had a couple of would-be sacks and an impressive deflection at the line of scrimmage Thursday. Uwazurike stacked another day of brute-force strength in the run game. Jones got a boatload of reps as the Broncos attempt to evaluate what they have in their third-round pick, the 289-pound rookie moving on the inside with the get-off of an edge rusher.
Allen, Franklin-Myers, D.J. Jones and Malcolm Roach are already locks on the interior. Nik Bonitto, Jonathon Cooper, Jonah Elliss, Que Robinson, Andrew Farmer and Tillman are all vying for roster spots on the edge. There is no easy answer on who the Broncos knock off this carousel.
“It felt like we had pressure all the time,” safety Talanoa Hufanga said after his return to San Francisco. “The depth is there. I think it’s like — that’s the cool thing.
“There’s the starting five, you got a five-man front, but you got depth. Everywhere.”
It’s a problem for head coach Sean Payton, who noted after the joint practice that there’s “a lot of competition for spots.” It’s also a wonderful problem to have at this point in training camp.
That strength helped draw inside linebacker Dre Greenlaw to the Broncos this offseason. And in the season’s first taste of action against another actual NFL offense Thursday, it became abundantly clear that an equally deep Broncos secondary will run on the fuel pumped by the D-line.
“That’s a feisty room, and it’s a close-knit room,” defensive coordinator Vance Joseph said this week. “And that’s the heartbeat of our defense.”
Early in team periods Thursday, as Uwazurike, Jones and Franklin-Myers stormed through the drawbridge of Purdy’s fortress, San Francisco could hardly manufacture any substantial yardage. There was a jump-cut by McCaffrey here. A quick-hit to RB Corey Kiner there. But standard drop-backs collapsed enough on Purdy to both contain his scrambling and speed up throws into blanketed coverage. One resulted in a diving pass break-up from Riley Moss, while others ended with balls skidding across the Santa Clara turf.
As the morning wore on and the sacking wore off — minus one monstrous bull-rush from Tillman — the 49ers’ offense opened up with cleaner pockets for Purdy. Rookie corner Jaden Robinson got burned deep a couple of times, and the Broncos’ back-end folded like paper on one red-zone look where Purdy didn’t feel as much as a whisper.
First-round pick Jahdae Barron got beat one-on-one on a beautiful throw from Purdy to receiver Ricky Pearsall for a touchdown. Barron rebounded a few plays later to record a sack himself on a crafty blitz, a package he’s thrived in throughout camp.
“Everybody always talks about the deer in the headlights, and being a rookie, and it’s like, the bright lights,” Hufanga said. “But he’s been calm under pressure, and that’s a really cool thing.”
Barron’s development, same as the development of Joseph’s entire secondary, will be helped by consistent rotations up front. The Broncos, clearly, have the bodies to keep Allen, Franklin-Myers and Jones fresh. The question is which bodies they’ll keep. Uwazurike has as much upside as any depth piece, but has played 12 games across a three-year NFL career interrupted by a gambling suspension. Jackson had the best day of any Broncos defensive lineman Thursday, but he is a 27-year-old second-year grinder who didn’t particularly impress in his snaps last year.
Whoever gets caught in the forthcoming weeks’ roster trim, though, should have their share of suitors.
“I think the objective is to put your best tape on film, certainly for the club you’re playing with,” Payton said. “And then also for the other 31, that may be looking for a position you play.”
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