The San Francisco 49ers have been fortunate. Extremely fortunate. They are proving that they entered the season with one of the deepest quarterback rooms in the league. Most teams can't survive losing one starting quarterback, much less two. Nevertheless, the 49ers have overcome the losses of Trey Lance and Jimmy Garoppolo. They remain Super Bowl contenders, with rookie Brock Purdy at the helm of the offense.
San Francisco made Purdy the last overall pick in this year's draft—Mr. Irrelevant. The rookie quarterback has been anything but irrelevant, though, and is one of the more intriguing NFL storylines of the 2022 season.
Purdy has benefitted from the experience he earned during his 46 starts at Iowa State. He's played nearly four full games and has three NFL starts under his belt, winning each of those appearances.
"He played a lot of football, so we had seen him a lot," general manager John Lynch told Kerry Crowley and Donte Whitner during a Thursday interview on KNBR. "At one point, people thought he was coming out after his junior year. He was probably a little higher-regarded after his junior year in the scouting world. Probably dipped a little his senior year, but had a lot of qualities that we liked."
The 49ers knew they wanted to add a quarterback late in the draft or as an undrafted free agent. Quarterback coaches Brian Griese and Klay Kubiak were big supporters of selecting Purdy, trying to heavily endorse the former Cyclones quarterback to the front office.
Purdy took part in Zoom meetings with Griese and Kubiak but never officially visited with the 49ers. The two coaches spoke with Purdy again heading into the draft's final day to catch up and express their desire to land the Iowa State quarterback.
Of course, the 49ers weren't the only NFL team that reached out.
"There was a bunch of teams calling both my agent and I [toward the end of the draft] that had interest and wanted to meet up, and obviously have me sign with them and whatnot," Purdy told reporters on Thursday. "So we had a list going, but there wasn't exactly one team that I was going to go to."
Purdy added, "The 49ers were on the list."
As the seventh round of the draft went on, Purdy wasn't sure what his future held. Would he be among the last players drafted, or would he enter the NFL as an undrafted free agent?
"Then I think with three picks left, that's when I got a call [from the 49ers]," Purdy said. "So that's how it went down."
Thank you Jesus for making this happen! We love you BP! We're always routing for you❤️💛😍🏈 #49ers pic.twitter.com/sU8vMVRQni
— Whittney Purdy (@Whittneypurdy16) May 1, 2022
San Francisco knew it wanted Purdy and wasn't willing to risk the quarterback signing with another team as an undrafted free agent. So when selection No. 262 came around, they made sure the now-23-year-old ended up in Santa Clara.
"By the end, there was consensus that we wanted to add Brock," Lynch said. "We probably thought that there was a good likelihood that we might do it as a free agent. We were recruiting him, but we kind of checked our list at each position of what we thought to be needs, and at that point, it just made sense to take him because there was a lot of love for him throughout our building, and I'm sure glad we did that. He's playing really well."
