The Browns can't buy a quarterback. The 49ers found their Super Bowl QB at a garage sale.
Money doesn't buy love, and it doesn't purchase quarterback bliss.
Sometimes it's better to rummage for a Super Bowl QB at a garage sale.
Ohioans have been dragged across decades with this conundrum.
The Browns invested No. 1 overall picks in Tim Couch and Baker Mayfield. They spent first-round picks on Brady Quinn, Brandon Weeden and Johnny Manziel. They forked over a boatload of draft picks and a Brinks truck of moolah for Deshaun Watson.
No one need explain how the expansion era has turned out for these gentlemen, or that another Super Bowl is at hand with the Browns, Lions, Jaguars and Texans as the only franchises among the current 32 never to get to one.
It is maddening or amusing, depending on one's viewpoint, to note that the Patriots won six Super Bowls with a No. 199 overall pick at quarterback, and that the 49ers are going to this year's dance with Mr. Irrelevant.
The names Brady and Purdy are not yet interchangeable, but Brock Purdy has taken a bold first step, going from the last pick of the 2022 draft to first place in the NFC.
Former Mount Union star Matt Campbell coached Brock Purdy in 4-year run at Iowa State
Larry Kehres saw it coming. Well, maybe not Super Bowl 58, but something.
Early in the 2018 college football season, Kehres was in Ames, Iowa, checking up on one of his former Mount Union guys.
Iowa State head coach Matt Campbell was perhaps the best player on maybe the best of Kehres's 11 NCAA Division III national championship teams.
Campbell, from Perry High School in Ohio's Stark County, spent an unhappy year at Pitt and transferred to Mount Union, whose head coach was Kehres.
Their fourth year together in Alliance, Ohio − 2002 − turned into a 15-0 monster.
Campbell was an All-America defensive lineman on a Purple Raiders team that plastered five postseason opponents by a combined 234-63 score. The final in the national championship game against Trinity (Texas) was 48-7.
It was 15 years later and Campbell was in his third year at Iowa State − the autumn of 2017. Purdy was a senior at the Perry High School in Gilbert, Arizona.
Iowa State's incumbent starter, Jacob Park, staked his claim to fame late in the 2016 season when he threw for 286 yards in a 66-10 rout of Texas Tech. It was Patrick Mahomes' next-to-last game for Texas Tech before the Chiefs drafted him 10th overall in 2017.
Park started the Cyclones' first four games in '17. He had become a father shortly before the season. He took a leave of absence after a Game 4 loss to Texas.
In the next game, former Massillon Tiger Kyle Kempt started and went legend against No. 3 Oklahoma.
Mayfield threw three touchdown passes to help the Sooners to a 24-10 lead. Beginning with the end of the third quarter, Kempt fired three TD passes in a 38-31 Cyclones win.
Kempt went 6-3 as the 2017 starter and headed into 2018, his final season of eligibility, as No. 1 QB. He played most of the opener against Iowa before exiting with a sprained knee.
Second-year Cyclone Zeb Noland started the next three games, beating Akron but losing to Oklahoma and Texas Christian. Noland's fourth start was at Oklahoma State, with Purdy dressing as the backup.
'Everything you look for' was College Football Hall of Famer Larry Kehres' reaction to seeing Brock Purdy practice
During his visit to Ames, as Campbell's guest at practice, Larry Kehres noticed Purdy.
"He was everything you look for," Kehres recalls. "I suppose he wasn't as tall as some would like."
Kehres was back home in Alliance, watching Iowa State vs. Oklahoma State on television, when Iowa State got off to a rough start in Stillwater.
Trailing 7-0, Campbell inserted Purdy at quarterback.
Purdy had appeared in just one of the first four games, doing the honors for a kneel-down at the end of a 26-13 win over Akron.
Brock Purdy becomes an instant Iowa State star with a win at Oklahoma State
Now it was real, and so was he.
The 6-foot-1 freshman threw a touchdown pass and ran 29 yards for a TD in sparking the Cyclones to a 16-7 lead.
Midway through the fourth quarter, his 60-yard TD pass provided a 48-35 lead. He was amazing in a 48-42 win.
"I was watching Purdy at my house and going, 'Oh … wow … ooh,'" Kehres said. "I wanted to tell Matt, 'This is your quarterback. I just saw your quarterback.'
"I get up at 4 the next morning. It's too early to call Matt. I'm sitting on my porch reading the paper, thinking, 'When can I call and tell him?'.
"Instead, Matt calls me and says, 'What did you think of our quarterback?'"
Kempt returned from his knee injury, but Purdy stayed on the field. The Cyclones were 7-2 with him at the controls.
Kempt, now on the Iowa State coaching staff, told The Repository on Thursday:
"When Brock came in you could tell he was different. It was who he was as a person. He was confident but not arrogant. He had this sense of calm and this foundation about him you don't see from kids that age."
With Purdy going the distance from 2019-21, Iowa State went 7-6, 9-3 and 7-6, not great, but not bad for a program that went 44-91 from 2006-16.
Brock Purdy becomes a 49ers star as an NFL rookie
As a 49ers rookie in 2022, Purdy replaced Jimmy Garoppolo early in Game 12. He finished the season as the starter, going 8-0 in leqding the 49ers to the NFC finals, in which he exited early with an elbow injury.
In 2023, October losses to the Browns and Bengals spawned chatter that the league had figured him out. That's ancient history as he heads into Super Bowl 58 on a 9-1 hot streak.
"Where were those guys who didn't draft him until the last pick?" Kehres said. "Granted, he's playing for a great coach who is using him perfectly, probably."
Kehres is a fan of 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan. Pierre Garcon, his former Mount Union receiver, played four years with the Colts before signing as a free agent a Washington team coached by Mike Shanahan (Kyle's father).
Garcon was going on 31 when he was a free agent again.
"I wondered if Pierre would get aother contract," Kehres said. "Maybe a couple million a year somewhere.
"Kyle Shanahan gave him a big contract with the 49ers. He knows what Pierre is like. Full go. All work. Will block.
"They'll pay for that."
49ers quarterback Brock Purdy is no longer 'Mr. Irrelevant' in the NFL
Shanahan deserves only so much credit. He's lucky Purdy was available at the end of the 2022 draft.
Nine quarterbacks got drafted in 2022. The first eight were Kenny Pickett (No. 20 overall), Desmond Ridder (No. 74), Malik Willis (No. 86), Matt Corral (No. 94), Bailey Zappe (No. 137), Sam Howell (No. 144), Chris Oladokun (No. 241) and Skylar Thompson (No. 247).
Purdy brought up the rear at No. 262.
Kehres scratches his head.
It's not as if Purdy spent four years at Iowa State in hiding.
Campbell recruited him hard and had him on the field for four years.
When Purdy began to win as an NFL rookie, Campbell said, "This kid has been a transformational figure at every stage of his life."
Has he transformed the way the NFL views 6-foot-1 quarterbacks? That question is the NFL's problem, not Purdy's.
Reach Steve at steve.doerschuk@cantonrep.com
This article originally appeared on The Repository: 49ers NFL Super Bowl QB Brock Purdy wowed Matt Campbell, Larry Kehres
