We Should All Be So Irrelevant.

$265 million. Maybe learn the name Brock

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The San Francisco 49ers weren’t looking to commit history. All they were really doing was acknowledging the oldest truth in the NFL bible, which is that teams without solid quarterbacks are doomed to stink forever.

Quarterbacks cost. So over the course of this off-season, the 49ers unloaded a parcel of veteran talent, players who were really good but likely to command more money than the franchise wanted to spend.

Why? Because they needed to save up to pay their star QB.

Why? I just told you. It’s right there in the bible.

So on Friday, the Niners did indeed commit history. They made Brock Purdy, whom they acquired with the 262nd and final pick of the 2022 NFL Draft, the highest paid Mr. Irrelevant in the annals of football lore with a five-year, $265 million contract. (If that sum offends you, feel better knowing that only $181 million of it is guaranteed.)

This is not really a record that’s kept, by the way. You don’t have to go looking for the list of best-paid last draft picks. But it says so much about the human capacity to improve and achieve that Purdy, who wasn’t considered big enough or possessed of enough wow-arm-strength to even play in the NFL, is so important to a recent Super Bowl entrant that it cast off other elite talent in order to pay him — him, Purdy.

What an amazing, giant story. What a perfect sports story. Why do we love these silly games? It has to be, at least in part, because no matter what else happens, or how fully a league or game becomes corrupted, or how forcefully some cult of personality is foist upon us — it has to be because sports can still surprise us.

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This isn’t even enough to fill an illustrated children’s book, but here’s the Purdy story in a thimble:

—Started as a high-school sophomore in Arizona, but was pretty crummy (8 TDs, 11 INTs). Got better and won a state title, but was still only rated a three-star prospect.

—Was recruited lightly — and late. Purdy had only four scholarship offers entering his senior year of high school. He chose Iowa State, an improving program but not a powerhouse in his prep grad year of 2018.

—Put up good college numbers. Stayed all four years. The NFL yawned. At 6-foot-1, Purdy was well shorter than the prototypical 6-4 pro quarterback, and while he could make throws, he didn’t pop people’s eyeballs with downfield missiles. Pro scouts marked him as a potential UFA, short for undrafted free agent.

—49ers took him at No. 262 in 2022, because why not. They already had a QB, Jimmy Garoppolo, who’d taken them to a Super Bowl two seasons before, and they had drafted Jimmy G.’s successor, Trey Lance, with the No. 3 pick in 2021.

Hey, the practice squad needs guys, too.

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And then Brock Purdy took over the world. First Lance and then Garoppolo got hurt during the 2022 season. Purdy stepped in. Kyle Shanahan, the 49ers’ head coach, quickly realized that he’d found the QB he had been looking for ever since he took the top job five years earlier, and it’s been all Purdy ever since. The too-small QB led the 49ers to a 12-4 record and the Super Bowl in his first full season, 2023. Last season, despite missing two games with injuries and seeing his top two offensive producers go down as well, Purdy finished 10th in passing yards.

That is a gross oversimplification of everything that has transpired, of course. But let’s skip past it so we can talk about Purdy’s deep, abiding sense of self-belief and his sense of worth — how he went from Mr. Irrelevant to playing his way past three quarterbacks, off the practice squad and onto the 49ers’ long-term list of must-have’s.

"My whole story has been just being overlooked, not good enough," Purdy said in an interview earlier this year. “And for me, deep down inside, I'm like, I know I can play and compete at this level, this level, this level.

“I got drafted last. All these people tell me, ‘You're not going to be good enough.’ But deep down inside, this whole time, I'm like, just wait until I get an opportunity to compete."

We all know hustle guys. One of my buddies growing up was that guy. If a person could succeed in sports based strictly upon how much he wanted it or loved it or was willing to grind for it, my friend would have shattered every record in the world. None of it prevails if there isn’t enough talent to put in the mix. We know that truth. Plenty of people reading this probably lived it.

But boy — even at the highest levels of sport, it is amazing how confidence and self-belief are so utterly everything. Maybe especially at the highest levels. Purdy’s talent got him in a uniform, but Purdy’s head and heart have taken him everywhere else. I have no idea how to contextualize $265 million, but if I’m forced to not mind somebody having it, I think I found my guy.

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