PURDY IS THE BROCK STAR, BUT KYLE SHANAHAN IS WHY IT’S HAPPENING
Looking for his own Super Bowl redemption with the No. 262 pick, the 49ers coach is blowing up the paradigm that assumes teams must throw riches at big-name QBs — who haven't been worth the investment
In Cleveland, Jimmy Haslam considered the 24 women accusing Deshaun Watson of coercive and lewd sexual behavior and traded for him anyway. He relinquished three first-round draft choices and two others to Houston. Then the Browns owner gave Watson the largest fully-guaranteed deal in NFL history — $230 million, five years — before his rub-and-tugging quarterback settled with 23 of his accusers and served an 11-game suspension.
In Denver, the Walmart heir who went quarterback-shopping on Rodeo Drive gave Russell Wilson a $242 million contract. This after sending three starters and five draft choices, including two first-rounders, to Seattle in a heist worthy of an FBI probe. In a wretched season for the Broncos and their rookie head coach, since-fired Nathaniel Hackett, Wilson caused violent avalanches in the Rocky Mountains and didn’t play half as well as his ex-backup, Geno Smith, who led the Seahawks to the playoffs.
In Green Bay, Aaron Rodgers pissed and moaned and vilified his superiors in the front office, who swallowed hard and handed him a three-year, $150 million extension. At the end of an execrable season, he looked every day of his 39 years, often seemed in a ayahuasca-fueled haze and heard one of his many ex-girlfriends (actress Shailene Woodley) speak of their breakup as “the darkest, hardest time in my life.” Now the Packers are trying to trade him to an AFC team — Las Vegas or the New York Jets make sense, as Tom Brady drops F-bombs when his podcast host asks for a retirement timetable — in a departure that might make Brett Favre’s exit look tame by comparison.
So, how many of these three newly-minted gentlemen reached the NFL playoffs this month?
None.
And what was the combined financial commitment, again? Six hundred and twenty-two million dollars, bucko.
This Sunday, a rookie quarterback named Brock Purdy — whose 13 on his jersey almost sinks into the back of his pants because he’s barely 6-feet tall — will try to lead the San Francisco 49ers to the Super Bowl on a base salary of $705,000 and a signing bonus of $77,008. As you know by now, Purdy was the 262nd and final player taken in last year’s league draft, qualifying him as the latest poor sucker to be affixed with the “Mr. Irrelevant’’ tag. As you know by now, his storybook ascent loosely is being compared to that of Brady, the 199th pick in the 2000 draft, who went on to become the most celebrated athlete of an American generation. As you know, he has won all seven starts since replacing Jimmy Garoppolo, who broke his foot after replacing Trey Lance, who broke his ankle. He has thrown for 16 touchdowns in that span against only four interceptions, while completing 66 percent of his passes and earning a league-leading 108.0 passer rating.
To wit: Why buy a Bugatti La Voiture Noire when a Kia does the job? Why invest $230 million on Watson when a church-going, Bible-reading revelation can be unearthed at the bottom of the seventh round?
“Yeah, when I take a step back, it’s pretty cool. Very thankful,” said Purdy, as humble as he is confident, a spirit that reminds us of a young Brady.
“It’s been football, man. I don’t try to make it more than it is. I’m a faith-based guy, so that’s how I stay grounded. I don’t look at football like it’s literally everything. It’s (not) do or die or anything like that. It’s a game and it’s my job, for sure, and I take it very seriously, but at the end of the day, I know that I’m not defined by the wins or losses as a person, like, that’s not who I am. I’m not just a quarterback. I wasn’t born to just to be a quarterback and play football, and that’s it. Like, I have a life and everything like that. But at the same time, man, I’m a competitor. I love to compete. I want to win at all costs.”
All of this is happening not because Purdy was recklessly overlooked by NFL personnel people, who concluded he had the blocky build and bulging quads of a fullback, which was true. This is happening not because Purdy was a diamond in the rough; at Iowa State, he had mechanical flaws in his throwing motion and once gulped an interception — mindlessly heaving the ball as he was being sacked — described by an ESPN writer as “one of the worst turnovers you’ll ever see.” This is happening not because Purdy slipped past the eyeballs of the collegiate coaching elite, recalling how Nick Saban wouldn’t even see him during an official visit to Alabama, telling Purdy’s high-school coach through a staff assistant, “You’re below average in height. Your arm strength is whatever. Your accuracy is average.” This is happening not because Purdy cowered after the slight, instead responding, per The Athletic, by telling Preston Jones, his coach at Perry High outside of Phoenix, “Coach, he doesn’t know me. … I want to go somewhere and try to kick his ass.”
This is happening because Kyle Shanahan is a football revolutionist.
This is happening because Shanahan, as the very best of the quarterback whisperers, understands that a team needn’t throw insane amounts of money at a franchise quarterback when he can win without a franchise quarterback. The realization makes Shanahan, one victory from a Super Bowl that he twice has come agonizingly close to winning, a more valuable commodity in 2023 than so-called star QBs who have been grossly overpaid. He is blowing up the paradigm, discarding conventional wisdom that the man behind center is the most important player in American team sports. If Brock Purdy wins an NFC championship in Philadelphia, then wins a league championship in his native Arizona, he’ll receive the same celebratory treatment as Kurt Warner, who also played college ball in Iowa and emerged from the cornstalks (and his shelf-stocking days at a Hy-Vee grocery store) to become a Super Bowl hero and prolific career passer. Purdy would get the Disney movie.
But let’s not forget, as too many people are right now, that Shanahan is the one pulling off this preposterousness. As he has done throughout his six seasons as 49ers head coach, he has scrambled to get quarterbacks ready to play. In Purdy, he has found a most unlikely plug-in savior as Lance — yes, the Niners gave up two first-round picks and a third-rounder to trade up and take him No. 3 last year — ponders a future as a backup. In Shanahan’s world, his offensive system takes precedence, and he develops quarterbacks to play in it. In Cleveland, Denver, Green Bay, Arizona and elsewhere — think about Baltimore, amid high drama as Lamar Jackson demands Watson-type money and Atlanta considers a trade — owners and executives are aghast at the possibility of Brock Purdy winning the Vince Lombardi Trophy. He may be the Brock Star, but Shanahan is the rock star here, the man who is changing the sport.
He identified a golden pebble and created a fairy tale, which allows great salary-cap flexibility and allows to 49ers to assemble an array of high-priced stars around him — with defensive disruptor Nick Bosa next to be paid on a loaded roster that includes transcendent weapons Christian McCaffrey and Deebo Samuel, a stalwart offensive line led by Trent Williams and a monster defense featuring Bosa and Fred Warner. Next season, after Garoppolo signs elsewhere and Lance assumes a sideline tablet, Purdy is owed $870,000 — or 0.4 percent of the cap. He gets a ginormous raise to $985,000 in 2024. At some point, of course, his agents will want a dramatically restructured deal if his success continues. But for now, he’s bound to a rookie contract paying him $2.7 million through 2025. Forget about Brady returning to his native Bay Area to finish his career. Forget about Rodgers doing the same in his native northern California. Why drain the cap with washed Hall of Famers when you have Brock Purdy as a historic bargain? “I’m not shocked anymore,” McCaffrey said. “It’s just who he is now.”
Which means the 49ers could be starting a long run as NFC contenders, all because Shanahan and general manager John Lynch ignored the mechanics, the build, the height, the limited pedigree — and focused on his character, arm strength and mobility. Purdy could be developed. Seeing his growth so quickly is nothing short is amazing, bordering on an all-time story if the 49ers beat the Eagles in a hostile environment. And to think the coaches weren’t sure if Purdy would make the team after signing journeyman Nate Sudfeld to a guaranteed contract as a backup. Once training camp started, Shanahan knew what he had.
“He’s definitely the most poised rookie I’ve ever been around,” he said. “When he first started out, he got such few reps because of the reps we were giving to Trey and Nate, but every time he got his one or two reps in practice, just how decisive he was and got the ball to the right spot and did it so aggressively. Never seemed unsure of anything, so he kept earning more reps. And the more reps we gave him, the more he continued to look the same and didn't take any steps back and then he carried it over to some of the preseason games. By the end of that, it was pretty easy to see how Brock was coming and we knew we wanted to keep him on the roster and not risk him going to the practice squad. It was a decision we had to make.”
Never mind that he looks like a kid who gives out Gatorade bottles on the sideline. Purdy’s efficiency has enabled the 49ers to win or tie the turnover battles that dictate outcomes — they’re 15-0 this season when they don’t lose that differential. They don’t need him to outgun the opposing quarterback. He is a game manager, a facilitator who keeps personal screw-ups to a minimum while feeding McCaffrey, Samuel, George Kittle and Brandon Aiyuk. Shanahan is known to tell him on the sideline, “The plays are there. The opportunities are there. We just gotta keep it simple and get it to the guys.”
He learned that three years ago, when a TCU safety caught his backwards pass — a keeper on all the year’s sports blooper shows — and walked into the end zone with the pick-six. “Yeah, that was the point in my career where I definitely had to take a step back and be like, man, just do what’s asked of you,” Purdy said. “Don’t try to do too much. You’re hurting the team when you make those kinds of mistakes. You’ve put all this unnecessary pressure on yourself to make something happen when it’s not there. So you just have to learn from it and not press.”
To place such faith in a rookie — when he could have traded for a veteran in midseason — Shanahan could be on his way to proving a greater point. He is best known for two Super Bowl heartbreaks. As offensive coordinator in Atlanta, he was ripped for second-half conservatism — though he called more running plays than passing plays — as Brady led New England to a comeback victory from a 28-3 crater. Three years ago, Garoppolo was outdueled in the fourth quarter by Patrick Mahomes and Kansas City in a 31-20 defeat. The failures were magnified because Shanahan’s father, Mike, coached the Denver Broncos to two Super Bowl wins and launched his son into NFL coaching in Washington, where Kyle was on the same staff as Sean McVay, who became his NFC West rival in Los Angeles.
Just as Purdy sometimes is confused as the ballboy, Shanahan’s casual fashion look caused a security guard to stop him as he headed to a post-game press conference after losing to the Chiefs. The guard apologized, but Shanahan already had been insulted by the final score. “I’m so mad,” he told reporters. “I’m OK. We'll bounce back. We'll get it done.”
He is doing just that. Maybe the Brock Star joyride ends in Philadelphia, in front of raucous loons ready to make hell for him as they did last weekend for another playoff newbie, Giants quarterback Daniel Jones. “I hear they bring it for the whole game, for four quarters,” Purdy said.
Yeah, and then some. But even if Kyle Shanahan loses another big one with the ultimate project, he has proven a point that might be bigger than a confetti parade — 44 miles, by the way — from Santa Clara to San Francisco. In an $18-billion-a-year league, fueled by $120 billion in media deals, he has shown the multi-billionaire owners how not to waste money on ballyhooed quarterbacks. To the fat cats, that’s a bigger incentive than a trophy.
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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.