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their quarterback to play. The other 31 teams have done the same, whether it's formulated by their head coach or offensive coordinator.

The next team that sends its quarterback into the huddle without a general guideline and unique language that details the operation will be the first. This isn't street football as a youth, using bottle caps to simulate position players on concrete, or sending a quarterback to simply run around and make something happen.

Purdy is a system quarterback,

List of injured starters is growing longer by the day.

all right, and it's a damn good system that plays to his strengths as well as his teammates. Which is exactly how it's supposed to work.

John Brodie was the first 49ers' MVP of the Super Bowl era in 1970, a time when quarterbacks got much less detail and called their own plays in the huddle, but it was still a system largely implemented by quarterbacks and receivers coach Jim Shofner.

Joe Montana operated in the so-called “West Coast Offense,” a generic term that was never really used by Bill Walsh. At its core, Walsh's system used short, horizontal-timing passes as an extension of the running game as part of an offense he devised under Paul Brown with the Cincinnati Bengals to accommodate a weak-armed quarterback in Virgil Carter. Walsh refined his offense at Stanford before being hired by the 49ers.

The MVP award went to Montana in 1989 and 1990, by which time the system had been expanded by Walsh and offensive coordinator Mike Holmgren, with Steve Young reaping the benefits of the Holmgren offense with an MVP in 1992.

Young won another in 1994 (in addition to a Super Bowl), with offensive coordinator Mike Shanahan building on what he inherited from Holmgren, who took his system to