BROCK PURDY’S RISE IS AN AMERICAN FAIRY TALE, BUT WINNING SUNDAY IS NUTS
We love Mr. Irrelevant soaring to the edge of an NFL title, but he would have to perform brilliantly — which hasn’t happened this postseason — to overcome Kansas City’s blitzing and Patrick Mahomes
Assume he wins Sunday night. Say he generates four touchdowns and 400 yards, one-ups Kurt Warner in quarterback amazeballing and wins the Super Bowl, then accepts a salute from Taylor and an ass-slap from Travis. Envision him returning to the Bay Area apartment he shares via his $870,000 salary with an offensive lineman, where at least he’ll have a new Toyota as part of his new brand-ambassador deal.
From Mr. Irrelevant to Sir Irrepressible, wouldn’t Brock Purdy’s ascension to the NFL championship be a sweet trick for a nation seeking hope and promise and love and kicks? Let him beat Patrick Mahomes. Let him mirror Drew Brees. Let his boyish face appear on every publication front, replacing Swift. The kid who was chosen No. 262 in the 2022 draft, dead last, stops a dynasty in Las Vegas.
“I mean, the bottom line is, life isn’t about you,” he will say to one and all. “Like, that’s what I believe, you know? Being a part of something bigger than yourself. You get wrapped up in getting all the glory and the fame and the status, but I feel like that’s a shallow life and that can fade away pretty quickly.”
With pleasant speech, from growing up in Arizona and going to school in Iowa, Purdy would replace the many egoists in sports — Aaron Rodgers, LeBron James, media, owners — and give us a safe place for a change. “You ever see one of those little water dragons running across the water?” teammate George Kittle said. “He is just a tough kid. There’s a lot of grit, and he understands that when he’s playing at a high level, everyone around him is better. We’re here because of him. All he’s done is play at an elite level.”
I wouldn’t wager on it this time. He has made too many mistakes in big games, including his last two in the postseason, and faces a competitor who avoids errors when it matters most. At some point inside Allegiant Stadium, where billionaires have fought for airport space and Ticketmaster offers a low seating price of $8,250, Purdy might wake up and realize he’s supposed to lead the San Francisco 49ers to a title in the biggest American sports event ever. As Niners linebacker Dre Greenlaw said of a suspect defense, “Teams do a really good job of having really good plays, and no matter what the situation may be, we’d better play hard and we gotta play fast.” That would be a hint, when the Kansas City Chiefs are raging on defense as Mahomes does his momentous work.
But what a phantasmagorical story it would be, not that we use the word often. What if Purdy ruled the world? The man, all of 24, credits his makers. “I think it's a testament to God, where he's taken me in life,” he said. “I’ve never been the biggest, fastest, strongest, any of that. But if you believe in yourself and think that you have what it takes and you truly do believe that and you don’t give up on it, then you can achieve it. I feel like I've always had to sort of fight for what I get, work for what I get.” Does he want a nickname in that vein? It’s Super Bowl week.
“I’m gonna be honest. I really don’t care,” he said. “If it’s gonna be Mr. Irrelevant still, great. I love it, and if that’s the case, then I’m gonna continue to wear it with pride. So it’s all good.”
Mr. Irrelevant doesn’t vanish simply because he threw for 4,280 yards, produced 31 touchdown passes and led the league in passer rating and 9.6 yards per attempt. Some of us believe the Purdy tale in regular-season terminology but dismiss it in the playoffs. Nothing was wrong with 49ers fans asking why he couldn’t grip a rainy ball against Green Bay or why he struggled in the first half against Detroit. This is the NFL postseason, when quarterbacks make their determining mark. Trent Dilfer did just enough to help Baltimore win a Super Bowl. Dan Marino did not in Miami.
The circumstances faded when he had a heavenly chat against the Lions. “When I’m down 17 at half, it was, ‘All right, God, you’ve taken me here, win or lose I’m going to glorify you,’ ” Purdy said. “That’s my peace, that is the joy, the steadfastness. That is where I get it from. That is the honest truth. I leaned into that. Sure enough, we were able to come back. Because I know that’s the way I felt. You feel like you’ve been put on this Earth for a higher purpose. And you’ve got such a great sense of gratitude for being in this position and you don’t want to spoil a second of it. And you recognize that a bunch of people are counting on you. But that’s not pressure, that’s just responsibility. And you embrace it.”
But what happens when coordinator Steve Spagnuolo and the Chiefs blitz, which is how they slowed Lamar Jackson in the AFC title game? What happens when Chris Jones, who continues to be shocked that his team is a two-point underdog, decides he wants a larger offseason contract? That’s when Cam Newton, a former league MVP who reached a Super Bowl, gets away with calling Purdy a “game manager.” When he’s playing well and relying on Christian McCaffrey, Deebo Samuel, Kittle and Brandon Aiyuk, he’s a victory engineer. But when he struggles, he’s trying to figure out a mess. “They're not difference-makers," Newton said. “They're being asked not to lose. I don't give a damn what you do. You don't have to score every time. You just don't have to throw a pick every time either. If we're going to call a spade a spade, a game manager is different than a game-changer.”
Said Purdy: “There's 32 teams in the NFL, and there's not a lot of people that can come in and play the quarterback position well in the NFL. It's a hard job. So, if you're saying that I'm a game manager and I don't look flashy in how I do it, that's your opinion and that's OK. And at the end of the day, I want to do what it takes to help my team win. I think winning, at the end of the day, in the NFL is probably the biggest and most important thing.”
Other than a mushy practice field at UNLV, of which the 49ers have complained to the league, coach Kyle Shanahan is bothered by the “game manager’’ chatter. He’s the one who realized Purdy was his best quarterback, at training camp in 2022, and eventually traded Trey Lance and Jimmy Garoppolo. Now, he’s operating a manager? “It's such a weird conversation to hear the whole world talking about this,” Shanahan said. “In my opinion, there's no such thing as a great quarterback if you can't be a game manager. So, I don't get how being a system quarterback or a game manager is a negative. … You're a game manager, you run the system right and you can make plays. Brock does all three of those things, so I don't get what we're talking about.”
He has won, sometimes when he should and sometimes when he shouldn’t. The outcome will be known afterward. “I don't have enough good things to say about Brock,” McCaffrey said. “All he's done since he's been here is play at an elite level. Everything starts with him. We're lucky he's our quarterback. He takes a lot of heat for absolutely no reason. All he has done has been a great leader and been a great player. I'm so proud of him and pumped up that I get another one with him this year.”
“An incredible quarterback,” fullback Kyle Juszczyk said. “He’s a Super Bowl quarterback — and I intend on him leading us to a win.”
America is pulling for him. “Now people are waiting for the Chiefs to lose,” Jones said. “I don’t know what dramatic occurance happened. They can keep hating us.” A big part of the backlash is Brock Purdy. People want to see him win. I want to see him win and hold an MVP trophy. “This kid is the best story that has been over two decades,” said Deion Sanders, not a bad one himself. “Coming from the last player taken and leading his team to the Super Bowl because of his play? I love this kid.”
It’s Vegas, right?
City of suckers, too.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.