As we embark on Super Bowl LVIII — otherwise known as Super Bowl SFKCII, a rare repeat game with the San Francisco 49ers and the Kansas City Chiefs playing for the NFL championship for the second time in five years — there’s ample reason to celebrate the starting quarterbacks for both teams. Patrick Mahomes of the Chiefs beat the 49ers, 31-20, in Super Bowl LIV after the 2019 NFL season, and he is playing in his fourth Super Bowl in five years. Mahomes’ counterpart Brock Purdy of the 49ers is making his Super Bowl debut and was as unheralded as can be coming out of college.
Their road to success couldn’t be more different. The Chiefs star was the 10th pick of the first round in the 2017 draft and became Kansas City’s starter in 2018 after a year as an understudy to Alex Smith. Purdy, meanwhile, was bypassed by every team in every round in 2022 before the 49ers chose him with the last pick (the 262nd) in the final round (the seventh).
Mahomes’ name is now perennially tied with the Super Bowl, as the Chiefs 28-year-old signal caller joins two other quarterbacks who have played in the title game four times in a five-year span. The others are Jim Kelly, who played four in a row with the Bills after the 1990 to 1993 seasons, and Tom Brady. Brady, it should be noted, did this two times. He made four starts in five years for the Patriots after the 2014 to 2018 seasons and had a four-for-five stretch from the 2016 to 2020 seasons, the last game coming with the Buccaneers.
Purdy, however, is just starting to make a name for himself. There are parts of his rise to stardom that resemble Brady’s career trajectory. The Patriots famously took Brady in the sixth round in the 2000 draft with pick number 199. He was a backup who got the starting job early in 2001, his second season, when starter Drew Bledsoe got hurt. Purdy was picked one round and 63 picks later than was Brady, earning him the undeserved moniker “Mr. Irrelevant,” unfairly but lightheartedly bestowed upon the final pick of each year’s draft. He began his pro career as the 49ers third-string quarterback behind Jimmy Garoppolo, the 49ers starter in Super Bowl LIV, and Trey Lance, the No. 3 pick in the draft one year earlier.
Purdy too was tasked with learning the game on the sidelines, before being thrust into service midway through his rookie year after both incumbents got hurt.
As a starter, Purdy proved to be an efficient leader who handled the complexities of Kyle Shanahan’s offense, leading the team to victory in the last five games of the 2022 regular season. He then won two playoff games before getting hurt in the NFC Championship loss to the Eagles. In the offseason, Shanahan considered signing Brady to play for the 49ers for one year in case Purdy couldn’t recover from that elbow injury, but that proved unnecessary. This year he’s 14-4 in 18 starts including two playoff games.
Shanahan believed in Purdy from the jump. San Francisco CEO Jed York recently told the media that in the summer of 2022 Shanahan told him “our third-string quarterback is our best quarterback.” But most of the NFL’s draft gurus were not sold on the youngster from Iowa State. Prior to the draft, NFL.com wrote that Purdy “is a burly pocket quarterback who needs a play-action based offense where he can rely on timing over release quickness and arm strength. He can be a confident passer when he finds his rhythm, but throwing is more of a chore than a talent thanks to a labored release.”
He certainly found his rhythm with the 49ers and has turned into one of the biggest steals in the history of the draft, a player who was picked so low that he even took a nap while he waited for his name to be called.
“I was real with myself,” Purdy told the San Francisco Chronicle late last year. “I wasn’t telling myself [I’d] go in the first two days; I was hoping early on the third day. But that last day was just so tiring, so draining. Throughout the day I was following the Niners and anytime they didn’t pick me I would be, like, drained in a sense. So I remember my dad and I literally took a nap at some point in the sixth round. I was so tired from all of it.”
“They said, ‘Hey, we have one more pick in the seventh round and we’re gonna try to take you — it’s between you and a safety,’” Purdy told The Chronicle. “I said, ‘Alright, sweet.’ I hung up and Googled what pick they had, and it was the last pick. I was like, ‘You’ve gotta be kidding me.’”
With the support of Shanahan, Purdy has thrived in the 49ers system, excelling beyond the eight quarterbacks who were drafted ahead of him in 2022. Purdy has an overall record of 21-5 as a starter (a winning percentage of 80.8%), including 4-1 in the playoffs. The eight quarterbacks drafted ahead of him, a group that includes Kenny Pickett of the Steelers, Desmond Ridder of the Falcons and Sam Howell of the Commanders, are 33-39 (45.8%) in the regular season and have not made a postseason start.
Now Purdy joins a list of late-round quarterbacks who became Super Bowl starters. Many of them were taken later than Purdy, by draft round if not by draft number, and thrived not just in the big game but also for their entire careers.
Bart Starr, the winning quarterback of Super Bowls I and II for the Green Bay Packers, was taken in the 17th round of the 1956 NFL draft, when the league only had 12 teams. The 200th selection overall, Starr played four years at Alabama but did not play much as a junior due to injury. In his senior year the 1955 Tide team — perhaps unbelievably for Bama fans of this generation to believe — finished with an 0-10 record and scored just 48 points all season.
Very few people knew Starr, who like Purdy, was the ninth quarterback selected in his draft. Several small Wisconsin newspapers that ran the UPI story of the Packers picks that January misidentified him as “Burt Starr, Alabama quarterback.” You can’t get more irrelevant than that. Or can you? The Green Bay Press-Gazette in its January 18, 1956 edition called him Bryan Bartlett, referring to him by first and middle names, omitting his last. “Bartlett will join the fight to become top assistant to [quarterback] Tobin Rote,” the paper said, adding later that he was 22, married, and had a military draft status of 1D.
Purdy would have fit right in with Starr in the early years of the Super Bowl. Quarterbacks who were taken in the ninth round of the draft or later started for their teams in five of the first six Super Bowls. In addition to Starr, Daryle Lamonica of the Raiders in Super Bowl II was a 24th round pick in the 1963 AFL Draft, Joe Kapp who led the Vikings in Super Bowl IV was an 18th round pick in 1959, Roger Staubach of the Cowboys in Super Bowl V was picked in the 10th round in 1964, and Johnny Unitas who started for the Colts in Super Bowl VI (and relieved Earl Morrall in Super Bowl III) was picked in the ninth round in 1955.
Starr was an NFL champion. So were Staubach and Unitas, and all three beat quarterbacks who were picked among the top half of the first round of the draft. Starr beat Len Dawson of the Chiefs (the fifth pick overall in 1957 by the Steelers) in Super Bowl I; Unitas beat Craig Morton of the Cowboys (No. 5 overall in 1965); and Staubach, who replaced Morton as the Cowboys quarterback one year later, beat Bob Griese of the Dolphins (the No. 4 overall pick in 1967, the first common draft between the NFL and the AFL). So, there’s precedent that Purdy can outshine first-round pick Mahomes.
Other unheralded draft picks to quarterback a Super Bowl team are Super Bowl XXXVII winner Brad Johnson of Tampa Bay (ninth round, No. 227 in 1992 by the Vikings); eighth rounder David Woodley of Miami in Super Bowl XVII (No. 214 overall); and two others who like Brady were picked in the sixth round—Stan Humphries of the Chargers in Super Bowl XXIX and Matt Hasselbeck of the Seahawks in Super Bowl XL.
Johnson was the 14th quarterback taken in his draft, the latest positional selection of any Super Bowl quarterback who was drafted (Purdy was the ninth QB picked in his draft and Brady was the seventh.). It turned out that Johnson’s 177 games played were the most among the 21 QBs who were chosen in 1992. After seven years with the Vikings and two with Washington, Johnson was in his second year with Tampa Bay in 2002. Prior to leading the Buccaneers to a Super Bowl victory after that season, he was asked to describe his reputation around the NFL: “Slow and weak-armed,” he replied.
Slow and weak-armed might also describe the greatest Cinderella quarterback of all time. Kurt Warner was an undrafted free agent from Northern Iowa who played in the Arena League and NFL Europe before leading the St. Louis Rams to victory in Super Bowl XXXIV. (The other undrafted QB to lead his team to the Super Bowl was Jake Delhomme, who like Warner went the NFL Europe route before joining New Orleans and eventually Carolina, where he led the Panthers to their first Super Bowl after the 2003 season.)
Warner once asked, “Who cares where a player was drafted?” He had the right to ask. After leading the Rams to their win after the 1999 season, he started two other Super Bowls. Like Starr, Unitas, Staubach, and eventually Brady, he earned a bust in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. After this year’s game Purdy might be justified asking the same question.
