As the 262nd and final pick of the 2022 NFL Draft, aka “Mr. Irrelevant,” it was unlikely Brock Purdy’s was ever going to complete a pass in the NFL.
The San Francisco 49ers quarterback entered the league as a third-string quarterback behind both the third overall pick in the 2021 NFL Draft Trey Lance and longtime starter Jimmy Garoppolo. Now both Lance (Dallas Cowboys) and Garoppolo (Las Vegas Raiders) are on other teams. Purdy has become the first out of 48 Mr. Irrelevants — since the terms was first coined in 1976 — to simply complete a pass, start a game at quarterback (in the regular season or playoffs) and make a Pro Bowl. No other Mr. Irrelevant had ever done any of those things. In just his second NFL season, Purdy is the third-lowest drafted quarterback to ever start a Super Bowl with only Hall of Famer Kurt Warner and Jake Delhomme ahead of him as undrafted players to start in the Big Game.
All of those parts about Purdy’s story are objective truth. Now, when the dialogue around his pecking order among the league’s best quarterbacks begins, given his team’s success and offensive ecosystem — one of the league’s best play-callers in head coach Kyle Shanahan, 2023 First Team All-Pro running back Christian McCaffrey, Pro Bowl wide receiver Deebo Samuel, 2023 First Team All-Pro tight end George Kittle, Brandon Aiyuk and 2023 First Team All-Pro left tackle Trent Williams — that conversation gets subjective in a hurry.
Purdy’s surface-level resume is that of a top quarterback: he led the NFL in passing yards per attempt while being on the precipice of joining Roger Staubach (1971), Joe Montana (1981), Kurt Warner (1999) and Tom Brady (2001) as the only quarterbacks to win the Super Bowl in their first season as a full-time starter. But Shanahan and that aforementioned supporting cast are electric.
NFL leaders/co-leaders this season on 49ers
Brock Purdy
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Source link : https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/brock-purdy-debate-does-49ers-qb-need-to-defeat-chiefs-in-super-bowl-58-to-finally-shed-game-manager-label/
Author : Garrett Podell
Publish date : 2024-02-06 23:35:58
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