Sunday's game between the 49ers and Philadelphia Eagles wasn't your ordinary Week 13 matchup.
The highly anticipated meeting was a rematch of the heartshattering NFC Championship Game that sent the 49ers home last season after both of their active quarterbacks -- Brock Purdy and Josh Johnson -- sustained injuries. After the loss, many 49ers players were adamant that San Francisco would have won the game if Purdy didn't get hurt.
Eleven months later, they got a chance to prove it. And ESPN's Stephen A. Smith believes they did just that with a 42-19 beatdown.
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"I'm going to say it because it needs to be said: The kind of beatdown that took place yesterday, one could argue it delegitimized the Philadelphia Eagles as NFC champions," Smith said Monday morning on "First Take." "Four quarterbacks for one team go down in the same year. Have you seen that in NFL history? They had no quarterback behind center from the second quarter on in an NFC Championship Game.
"What I'm bringing up is that Deebo Samuel comes on 'First Take' during Super Bowl week and privately, off the air, he's pretty ticked off because he's like, 'We should be here.' ... Then we come in here and we're looking forward to this. They've been talking about how we should've been the ones that were there, not y'all. [They] showed up, talked trash, they come onto the field, walk right through midfield, right past the Eagles just shoving them to the side, letting them know that we are here kick your ass. And then promptly went out and kicked ass."
During the sixth play of the NFC title loss, Purdy sustained a torn ulnar collateral ligament in his throwing elbow that required significant offseason surgery. Later in the third quarter, he was forced to re-enter the game after Johnson sustained a concussion -- but he couldn't throw.
San Francisco 49ers
The game quickly turned into an unbearable, almost unwatchable contest as the Eagles' ticket to Super Bowl LVII became increasingly clear.
But in Sunday's game, Purdy was more than perfectly healthy -- he had a big game in the City of Brotherly Love, completing 19 of 27 pass attempts for 314 yards with four touchdowns and no interceptions.
The 49ers' goal every week is to win. But as the team traveled back to Philadelphia on Sunday, it might have had just a little extra motivation to get the dub.