LOS ALTOS, Calif.—The 262nd and final pick of the 2022 NFL Draft is the kind of story, in all ways, that Steven Spielberg will want to make into a film one day. Maybe soon, actually.
I had no idea about the tentacles of it all until I took a ride to work one morning last week with 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan.
April 30, 2022. Day three of the draft. Rounds four through seven. Now it got to be the last dozen or so picks, late in round seven. The San Francisco 49ers had the last pick overall, number 262. “That day in the draft room,” Shanahan told me as he drove through Mountain View, slowing to account for the school dropoffs, “it got a little intense.”
There were nine Compensatory Picks awarded in the seventh round in 2022, the final one to the 49ers. Comp Picks, as they’re called, are rewards to teams that lose veteran players in free-agency, based on the contracts departing players earn on the free market, plus the free agents they sign. Quarterback C.J. Beathard, drafted by the Niners in 2017 (he eventually backstopped Jimmy Garoppolo), signed a cheap free-agent deal with Jacksonville the previous year, and per the NFL Comp Pick system, the Niners were awarded the 32nd and final Comp Pick of the draft for losing Beathard.
So now, with the Dollar Store Comp Pick of 2022—the lowest-value Compensatory Pick awarded by the NFL—the 49ers had a bonus choice. Because they’d traded up the previous year to get quarterback Trey Lance, there was no way Shanahan and GM John Lynch, with prospects at several positions with make-it grades still on the board, could sacrifice one of those for another quarterback. Could they?
As Shanahan, soon after dawn last Tuesday, piloted his Tesla through the southern edge of Silicon Valley on the way to work to prepare for Super Bowl LVIII, he described the scene that April 2022 Saturday afternoon, sitting with Lynch and his staff in the 49ers’ draft room.
“I was sure Brock was worthy of the fourth round, and we put a fourth-round grade on him,” Shanahan said. “There was no way we could take him for our team. But we’re sitting there in the seventh, and all these picks go by, he’s still there. That’s when I get to hear our linebacker coaches, all the scouts, other coaches, everybody who’s talking, saying things like: I can’t believe my guy is still there in the seventh! I love this guy. Or, We got all these needs! You traded those ones last year! We don’t need a quarterback to be our third guy. Or, Kyle! We can still get him as a free agent. He’s not gonna get drafted. I mean, it’s all coming down on me.
“You hear all this stuff and the last thing you wanna be is the offensive head coach who’s like, ‘Nope, we’re taking my favorite quarterback.’ I get it—this linebacker, this running back might start for us … This linebacker might be the next dude. I remember saying before the draft I wouldn’t be surprised if Brock was there in the seventh, or didn’t get drafted. Just how the NFL works.
“I’m always trying to check myself on this stuff. The pick’s coming up and I remember [club co-chair Dr. John York] asking, ‘Who’s the best player out there?’ I go, ‘Well, there’s no doubt Purdy’s the best player.’ He goes, ‘Then what are we talking about?’ I was like, ‘Well, there’s other spots. Also, we might be able to get him as a free agent for $10,000 after the draft.’ Dr. York can’t believe it. He’s looking at me like, I don’t get why there’s discussion if you guys think he’s the best player.
“Then it gets closer. I’m also getting the feeling we’re not getting Purdy as a free agent because there are so many other teams who are going to try to sign him. He wasn’t coming to us. He’s told me since then he was signing somewhere else. I said in the room, ‘Let’s not risk it. This guy’s too good.’
“John and I, we took Purdy. And thank God we did.”
Imagine: An Iowa quarterback (Beathard) departing, an Iowa State quarterback (Purdy) arriving, with the 32nd and final Comp Pick in this NFL system of bonuses. But the pick tells me something else: Shanahan had to be wondering deep down if the two incumbents, Garoppolo and Lance, had the stuff to win a Super Bowl.
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The two teams, 14-6 Kansas City and 14-5 San Francisco, arrived in Las Vegas Sunday. They’ll have their first full-team media stuff tonight at Allegiant Stadium, and begin the practice week Wednesday afternoon—KC at the Raiders’ practice facility in nearby Henderson, the Niners at UNLV’s football facility.
The game’s a rematch of the 31-20 Kansas City win in the Super Bowl four years ago—something, as you’ll read, that still stings for Shanahan and the Niners.
Now for one of the topics of the week. “Did you tell Brock Purdy you were trying to sign Tom Brady to start for the Niners last offseason?” I asked.
“I’m glad you asked me that question,” Shanahan said.
“Yes, I was serious about it,” Shanahan said. He said he and the young quarterback spoke about Purdy’s status as starter early last offseason. “As we talked, I’m looking at Brock, and he’s got his arm in a sling, and I really am not sure I’ve got a quarterback who’s going to be ready for the start of the 2023 season. That started all of this.”
As the Niners prepared for the 2023 season, Shanahan understood the problems with Jimmy Garoppolo headed for the free market and his two QBs coming off big surgeries. Trey Lance underwent a second ankle surgery in late December 2022 after breaking it three months earlier. Purdy underwent major elbow surgery on March 10, 2023. Shanahan and Lynch were optimistic but not sure if either would be ready to start the 2023 season.
The coach and GM had discussed but not acted on trying to sign Tom Brady post-Patriots in 2020; the gamble to go with a 43-year-old Brady versus a 29-year-old Garoppolo seemed too risky. So Brady went to Tampa and won a Super Bowl, which left many in the Niners’ hierarchy with major regrets. Now, Shanahan wanted to pursue Brady.
“I actually thought it was giving Brock the biggest compliment,” Shanahan said. “I let him know he’s our guy long-term. No question. And if Tom Brady wanted to come here and start for one year, that’s the only way you’re not starting when you’re healthy this year. That’s pretty cool. I wanted to assure him, ‘Don’t worry. You’re our guy. But how cool would it be if Tom Brady would be the quarterback here for one season? How cool would it be for you to learn from him?’
“I mean, if Brock never got hurt, this wouldn’t have been a consideration at all. I’d never have brought it up. But I’ve got to think about the team. What if he’s not ready in September?”
Moot point, as it turned out. Brady said no. The Niners signed Sam Darnold instead. Fortunately for the Niners, though Purdy wasn’t quite 100 percent by the start of the season, he was healthy enough to start, and to win.
I understand Shanahan’s thought process here. No question Purdy earned the right to start in 2023 by his play in eight starts the previous year, but to be ready to play an NFL game exactly six months after major elbow surgery was no sure thing. If Purdy has some hard feelings about it—and he may—those are understandable, but this is a tough business. Final point about this: If Brady did come, he’d be 46 years, 6 months old today. Do you think he’d still play like the GOAT? No one knows.
When you listen to Shanahan, and you go over his life in football for a few minutes, it’s hard to believe he’s just 44. He’s a generation younger than Andy Reid (65), but has packed an inordinate amount of football into those 44 years, in part from being the son of two-time Super Bowl-winning coach Mike Shanahan. He became the youngest position coach in the league in 2006 at 26 (wide receivers, Houston) and the youngest coordinator in the league in 2008 at 28 (offense, Houston). He was an offensive coordinator for nine years before, at 37, getting the Niners’ job in 2017. Crazy thing is, only three coaches have longer tenures with their teams than Shanahan’s seven seasons in San Francisco. It’s become a young man’s game.
In his high school years, Kyle Shanahan was a constant in and around the Broncos facility. When the Broncos played Green Bay in Super Bowl XXXII in San Diego, Kyle, a high school senior, held the headset cord behind his father on the Denver sideline.
“The neatest thing about going to that Denver Super Bowl is that, basically my whole life I didn’t think it was possible for the AFC to win the game,” Kyle said. “The NFC had won 13 in a row going into that game. I remember the morning of the game, I was sitting in my dad’s hotel room with my buddy. We’re watching ‘White Man Can’t Jump.’ My dad’s in the living room working on the game plan and I’m like, ‘Dad, do you guys think you have a chance?’ He looked at me like I was the dumbest person in the world. He’s like, ‘Are you serious? I guarantee you we’re gonna win this game.’”
Denver 31, Green Bay 24. The old man knew.
“Trivia for you: I was technically the last guy ever to hold cords for a head coach in the Super Bowl. They went wireless the next year. But you watch the highlights of that game and you see me behind my dad, the kid with pimples,” he said.
Part of this week’s storyline, Shanahan knows, will be his prior trips to the Super Bowl. He was the coordinator in Atlanta seven years ago today when the Falcons blew a 28-3 lead to the Patriots with 20 minutes to play and lost 34-28 in overtime. He was the head coach as the Niners blew a 20-10 lead midway through the fourth quarter and lost to Kansas City.
Pretty rough, getting shut out 31-0 to end the loss to New England (with two first downs in the last 27 minutes) and 21-0 in the last eight minutes of the other.
“Haunted by the Atlanta game to this day?” I wondered.
“No,” he said. “It hurts. It doesn’t kill you. You understand what happened. You understand you can handle it. You can take it. ‘Haunted’ is just such the wrong word. It makes you stronger, really. But, you know, if you tell me before that game you’re going to blow a 28-3 lead and lose, I’d be like, ‘Do I ever come out of my room again?’ You realize, this is sports. Any one of 20 different plays would’ve changed that game. But I also understand that the quarterback on the other side [Tom Brady] did the most unbelievable thing I’ve ever seen. He performed surgery for an entire second half. The harder one was the Kansas City game, personally.
“As you get older and you go through the experience, you just … you try to control everything. You realize you can’t. You also realize you can handle it. And you realize how much you love it.”
We’re in Santa Clara now, close to Shanahan’s office. I said: “It’s like when Jim Kelly lost his fourth Super Bowl. I went to Bills camp the next year. I said, ‘The despair you must feel—do you ever think, maybe I’ll go paint houses or something?’ He says, ‘Are you kidding me? This is the greatest job in the world!’”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Shanahan said. “What does get you choked up is how close you get with people when you go on a playoff run, a Super Bowl run. You’ll remember it forever—all the shared sacrifice. When you lose, and you feel the heartbreak, you get to see how you handle it, how you react, how you handle the pressure the next time. And, oh my gosh, you realize, ‘I am this. I can do this.’ You get to go through something you love, something that’s more important in life than almost anything. That’s what I learned about football growing up, but it only gets stronger as I get older.”
Now we’re turning into the parking lot.
“Football,” Shanahan said, “teaches you who you are.”
The game. Matching wits with KC coach Andy Reid and defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo, trying to find something, anything to stymie Patrick Mahomes. Shanahan made an interesting point: It’s not just figuring a way to block Spagnuolo’s multiple blitz looks when you play Kansas City. It’s making sure you capitalize on however many chances you get offensively, because you know Reid and Mahomes are so good at capitalizing on theirs.
“With Patrick,” Shanahan said, “it’s about the way he creates, the time he buys, the way he throws so fluidly, so confidently, from all platforms. Every game he’s like a Barry Sanders highlight reel. And [Travis] Kelce, I know he’s had a couple of drops, but to me he’s got the best hands in football. Their chemistry is so great.”
But you can hear it in Shanahan’s voice. He’s happy to go into this game with the last pick in the ’22 draft on his side.
The interesting thing about Purdy is how unaffected he is by all of this. He’s that way in front of the media and the world. And Shanahan said he’s precisely the same way in front of his team.
“It comes from somewhere, I’m sure his parents,” Shanahan said. “I think it has a lot to do with his faith. He has a foundation in him of who he is as a human being. He is so confident in who he is as a person. He’s one of the most confident, humble people I’ve ever been around. Borderline cocky, which is such the wrong word because he’s so humble and such a good dude. He one thousand percent believes in himself. This doesn’t surprise him at all.
“I remember his walk-through before his first start last year. He made all these mistakes. Missed a few audibles; ‘cans,’ we call them. Not a good day. He comes up to me right after and he’s like, ‘I hope that didn’t stress you out, Kyle. That’ll happen to me sometimes. Trust me. I won’t mess those up in the game. Don’t be scared.’ And of course he goes out and plays great.”
The other thing you notice about Purdy, something that could be vital next Sunday, is his ability to stay with a play till the last split-second, even with heat in his face. Against Detroit in the NFC title game, two plays stick out. Three minutes into the game, he held-held-held the ball waiting for Deebo Samuel to cross from right to left, 15 yards downfield, with 325-pound tackle Alim McNeill bearing down on him, clean. Just as he released the ball—a 15-yard completion to Samuel—Purdy got blasted by McNeill.
The other throw was Mahomesian. In a 24-all game with 18 minutes left, Purdy should have been sacked for a loss of nine by Detroit safety Ifeatu Melifonwu but slipped out of it; rolling left under heavy pressure, he threw a three-quarters dime to fullback Kyle Juszczyk 18 yards away.
“I mean, I’m getting my call ready for like second-and-20 because there’s no play there,” Shanahan said. “Guy just makes plays when they’re not there. He does it more than any quarterback I’ve had. And he also is an assassin when it comes to what we’re trying to do.
“Then I hear what people say. People down on him. It is comical. Playing quarterback is how you play quarterback. What if Joe Montana was in there? Joe’s not gonna run around like Lamar and Patrick. But he’s Joe Montana! I’m not trying to compare him and Brock. But you know, this is a big sport, with huge media. People have to realize in our profession about how the world works, too. Guys have to talk. We only play once a week, and the rest of the week, everybody talks.
“This is what I love about Brock. Last pick in the draft. Takes us to the conference championship game twice and this Super Bowl in two years. Getting talked about for MVP. And the dude, he doesn’t have to work at not listening to it or trying to stay humble or trying to not get caught up in how life is changing. You know why? He doesn’t care. He really has a true foundation and knows who he is and who he wants to be. That is rare for any human. He’s a special player. But this stuff … he’s a special guy.”
We know Mahomes can handle this spotlight. We think Purdy can too—but until he does it, we can’t know for sure. No shortage of storylines for Super Bowl LVIII. How Shanahan orchestrates the gameplan for the last pick in the 2022 draft, and how Purdy performs, well, those are my favorites.
Read more in Peter King’s full Football Morning in America column.