The most unmistakable sign that Brock Purdy is a big-time NFL quarterback? We’ve stopped obsessing over the fact that he’s a quarterback. Most people think he’s not supposed to be a quarterback, at least not to the informed minds who create professional football teams, who repeatedly passed over Purdy until San Francisco took him dead last in the 2022 NFL Draft.
It’s a selection so haphazard that it comes with a nickname: Mr. Irrelevant. Last year, people were shocked that “Mr. Irrelevant” was actually starting games for the 49ers. Now, some believe he could win league MVP. He faces sturdy MVP competition, including Baltimore’s Lamar Jackson, Tyreek Hill and Tua Tagovailoa in Miami and possibly Jalen Hurts in Philadelphia. There’s also Dallas’s Dak Prescott and running back Christian McCaffrey, an all-around playmaker on Purdy’s team.
However, non-quarterbacks tend to be disadvantaged in MVP votes, with Adrian Peterson being the last non-QB to win in 2012. It’s Purdy who has the inside track after a performance where he threw for four touchdowns and 242 yards in a win against Arizona. Despite taking a heavy hit in the second quarter, which caused him to miss a few snaps, he recovered to lead San Francisco to its sixth straight win and an early clinch of the NFC West. The 49ers Christmas night showdown against the Baltimore Ravens was a potential Super Bowl preview.
Although the 49ers lost to the Ravens, Purdymania is starting to feel routine, even if it shouldn’t. Purdy is a player who started the 2022 season as the backup to the backup behind both Trey Lance and Jimmy Garoppolo until injuries presented an opportunity, and he never looked back. In the former Iowa State star, San Francisco elevated a coolly reliable passer who keeps getting better at chucking it deep and those pinpoint throws designed so only receivers can catch them.
Purdy leads the league in quarterback rating (119), touchdown passes (29) and is second to Tagovailoa in yards passing (3,795). Still, Purdy isn’t the craziest long-shot QB ever. Hall of Famers Kurt Warner and Warren Moon weren’t drafted at all; Warner was out of the league stocking grocery store shelves before his Rams fairy tale began. However, Purdy’s consistency stands out in a moment in which many highly-touted prospects have failed to deliver.
This season has been a ragged one for quarterbacking. Your favorite team may be on its third or fourth signal-caller of the season. You may not even know this because you threw your television out a window in November. Purdy’s rise is another reminder of the limits of talent prognostication, even from the people paid to do it. Every spring, we are barraged with allegedly expert draft wisdom that cannot make a full measure of a person and routinely looks ridiculous by mid-autumn.
In fact, many of the current MVP candidates were shortchanged by the experts in some regard. Jackson, a Heisman winner in college, says a pro team asked him if he’d be open to playing wide receiver. Prescott was a fourth-round pick. Hurts was picked 53rd and began as a third-stringer. Tagovailoa began as a high pick (fifth overall) but was dogged by criticisms and injuries for much of his early career.