Tom Pelissero shares trait that makes Brock Purdy a great Kyle Shanahan quarterback

A lot of people missed on Brock Purdy. The quarterback was the last overall pick in the 2022 NFL Draft and ended up in third place for NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year.

Speaking with NBC Sports Bay Area, NFL Media’s Tom Pelissero shared the story of a “friendly wager” he had with an unnamed NFL scout. That scout said he would buy Pelissero dinner if Purdy was drafted. Pelissero projected the quarterback to be a sixth- or seventh-round draft pick.

As the seventh round was going on, that scout was texting Pelissero, confident that he would not owe the NFL insider a dinner. Then the San Francisco 49ers made the quarterback pick No. 262.

During Week 13, Purdy got the opportunity to start after the 49ers lost their second quarterback of the season, Jimmy Garoppolo. Purdy went on a nice run, leading San Francisco all the way to the NFC Championship Game.

The scout would periodically text Pelissero, “Boy, I missed that one. … Yeah, we misevaluated that thing.”

This week, ESPN posted a do-over of the 2022 NFL Draft and has Purdy being drafted with the No. 4 overall pick. So what is it that NFL teams missed with Purdy? Even the 49ers passed on him multiple times before selecting him with the last overall pick.

“I think that he’s like a lot of the guys that Kyle Shanahan has found through the years where he’s not necessarily the biggest guy with the biggest arm, but he can process really fast,” Pelissero shared with Matt Maiocco and Jennifer Lee Chan. “That’s the number one characteristic Kyle looks for in quarterbacks, is can you process it? Because Kyle’s skill is he gets people open. There’s going to be people open. You just need to see it and know where the ball needs to go. That’s what he’s done every step along the way.

“That’s how Matt Ryan won the MVP playing for Kyle back in Atlanta, was once he got to year two, and it’s, ‘Listen, this is not your old offense. You’re not controlling everything at the line scrimmage. I will have the guy open. Be automatic.’ And Matt Ryan won the MVP playing like that.”

Purdy didn’t have many of the physical traits that NFL teams look for in a franchise quarterback, so it’s understandable why so many repeatedly passed on him.

“[Shanahan]’s as good as anybody with developing quarterbacks,” Pelissero said, “but specific to Brock Purdy, he’s just—how tall is he? Six foot tall, doesn’t have a huge arm, played a lot of football, which sometimes can be almost a negative for you in terms of everybody sees, like, ‘I’ve seen so much tape. We maybe know where his ceiling is.’ And so that’s, I think, how people looked at him within the league, was he might be a long-term backup type of guy.

“I’d have to go back and look what I wrote, but I bet I wrote something like, He’d be a long-term backup for you. Really smart. You like all that about him, just not the biggest guy, not the biggest arm. What’s the best he’s going to do? The answer is, on an offense that’s got Christian McCaffrey and Deebo Samuel and [Brandon] Aiyuk and [George] Kittle and go down the list, he can function at a pretty high level because he can see it, he can process it, he gets the ball where he needs to go. “

Purdy is scheduled to undergo surgery on February 22 to repair the tear of the ulnar collateral ligament (UCL) in his right elbow, suffered during the NFC Championship Game. He is expected to spend six months recovering.