Brock Purdy leads injury-plagued 49ers to win over Cardinals

SANTA CLARA, Calif. – All the San Francisco 49ers’ worries paused Sunday once Brock Purdy completed a fourth-quarter touchdown pass to George Kittle.

But because the Arizona Cardinals answered with a touchdown, it took another Purdy-to-Kittle touchdown to secure the undefeated 49ers’ 36-30 victory at Levi’s Stadium.

Purdy’s 10- and 20-yard touchdown passes to Kittle sent fans home happy and stuck to the script on Kittle-bobblehead giveaway day.

As is their weekly way, the 49ers (3-0) had to overcome significant injuries to a withering roster, with both wide receiver Mike Evans and left tackle Trent Williams taken off by cart.

As if that didn’t invite the Cardinals (1-2) to mount a second-half comeback, injuries already decimated the 49ers’ defense, including the loss of Nick Bosa to a calf injury in mere warmups for Thursday’s practice.

Not until Deebo Samuel recovered an onside kick with 33 seconds left was this victory complete; Arizona’s Chad Ryland made a 49-yard goal with 34 seconds left, after the Purdy-to-Kittle encore.

Purdy passed for 297 yards with four touchdown passes, no interceptions and, for the third straight game, no sacks. He had a potential 55-yard touchdown scramble wiped out by a Kittle holding penalty, but that score came quickly followed with his 20-yard scoring strike to Kittle near the right pylon with 1:31 remaining.

Midway thorugh the fourth quarter, Purdy found Kittle over the middle for a 10-yard touchdown pass. Arizona answered with a 14-play, 68-yard touchdown drive capped by Jacoby Brissett’s 1-yard run.

While Christian McCaffrey had 75 rushing yards and 41 receiving yards, he sparked the 49ers’ final touchdown drive with an 11-yard catch and 12-yard run into Cardinals’ territory with 1:55 to go.

That tense ending was the polar opposite of the 49ers’ happy-go-lucky scoring spree to start this NFC West matchup.

Evans pulled off a stunning trick play with a hook-and-lateral to Samuel for the 49ers’ first touchdown. Then Evans nonchalantly let Purdy’s second touchdown pass drop over his shoulder and into his lap in the end zone.

The 49ers had a 14-0 lead, but by halftime, they would no longer have Evans. Then it was Williams who got carted off with a nerve stinger, the result of a block on a McCaffrey touchdown run for a 23-6 lead just after halftime.

A rib injury forced Evans to painfully stammer off the field and leave on a cart for the locker room a minute before halftime. That same cart would take away Williams, and even though he was back on the 49ers’ sideline before the fourth quarter, he would not be returning and Purdy’s blindside would be protected by Vederian Lowe.

The 49ers’ offense seemed so hot that it might simply keep on trucking without Williams and Evans. After all, they did open with two blowout wins that cost them wide receivers De’Zhaun Stribling and Demarcus Robinson to ankle injuries.

How many injured stars can the 49ers afford to lose before October? The majority of Sunday’s defensive front featured replacements.

The Cardinals had almost the entire second half to erase a 17-point deficit, and the 49ers had more injuries and defensive lapses to overcome along the way.

Two Arizona touchdowns, on short passes by Brissett, cut the 49ers’ lead to 23-20 with 13 minutes remaining. That was the score once Brissett completed 1-yard finale to Jeremiah Love on a drive in which the Cardinals got the ball back after a punt careened off the 49ers’ Siran Neal. A fourth-down conversion from the 20 was made possible by a pass-interference penalty in the end zone by Deommodore Lenoir, who returned from a first-half concussion evaluation.

Arizona’s third touchdown drive of the second half is what pulled them within 29-27

Although the 49ers produced an opening-drive touchdown for the third straight game, nothing was like this: Purdy’s third-and-12 pass found Evans for a 6-yard gain, and Evans immediately lateraled to a hard-charging Samuel, who picked up a Luke Farrell block and buzzed 80 yards down the left sideline.

Two plays earlier, Purdy opened with an incompletion to Evans, who got rocked across the middle by safety Andrew Wingard and officials did not grant Evans’ request for a defenseless-receiver penalty. Evans came out for McCaffrey’s ensuing 3-yard run, then it was showtime.

Evans got his own touchdown to open the second quarter, nonchalantly letting Purdy’s 23-yarder drop in over Evans’ left shoulder and into his waist-high hands against cornerback Denzel Burke, for a 14-0 lead.

That was Evans’ second touchdown in three games and 110th of his career, one shy of Tony Gonzalez for ninth-most in NFL history.

The Cardinals sandwiched 26- and 41-yard field goals around the series in which Evans got hurt. The 49ers extend their halftime lead to 17-6 as Eddy Piñeiro drove through a 57-yard, into-the-wind field goal as time expired. Piñeiro, however, missed two point-after kicks before making his final one.

Although cornerbacks Lenoir and Renardo Green were cleared after concussion evaluations, the 49ers also saw linebacker Dre Greenlaw (quadriceps) and Gracen Halton (cramps) injured along the way.

The 49ers’ make-shift defensive front relied on blitzes to force third-down stops on the Cardinals’ opening third possessions.

Drive No. 1 saw Greenlaw hurry a third-and-15 incompletion. Drive No. 2 had Fred Warner hit Brissett as he unleashed a downfield prayer to Marvin Harrison Jr., whose pass interference penalty was declined and Lenoir got credited with a pass breakup. Then, with the 49ers up 14-0, the defense did not allow a first down and instead used another third-down blitz to halt the Cardinals, although Brissett eluded a sack by three pressuring Niners and completed a short pass that Khalid Kareem stopped well shy of a first down.

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