He's the talk of the NFL, Valley native Brock Purdy has always been the underdog you can never count out.
Tom Brady had never been outdueled by a quarterback during their first career start, until Sunday.
He may be Mr. Irrelevant, but Brock Purdy is no stranger to being overlooked.
"He's got a chip on his shoulder that's more of a boulder, but he would never admit that," says Dan Manucci, Purdy's longtime quarterback coach in Arizona, and a former NFL QB himself.
"One of those kinds of guys that you know is going to be successful because he's got that quiet confidence about him," he added.
From very few scholarship offers coming out of Gilbert's Perry High School, to being the last pick in April's NFL Draft, nothing seems to phase Purdy.
Purdy has shown all he ever does is prove the doubters wrong.
"If you're not in Brock Purdy's locker room and if you're not with him on a daily basis in the weight room, in a locker room, in meetings, then you just you have no idea who he is," says Purdy's former high school coach Preston Jones. "It takes a while for people to see and start believing in him because they just see a guy who in their minds is too small or doesn't have the arm or doesn't have this. They always look for things he doesn't have, and they have no idea all the things he does have. People are starting to find out."
Mr. Irrelevant is now very relevant, none of the previous 46 players with that moniker were quarterbacks thrust into the starting role on a Super Bowl caliber team.
And yet Purdy , has been calm, cool and collected. He picked apart Brady's Buccaneers Sunday afternoon.
"Very emotional moment for myself and I think a lot of folks that have worked with Brock, to see all that he's been through, to see the shining moment that hopefully continues moving forward," says Manucci.
Purdy's family was already planning on going to the game to see Brady, long before they knew their son and brother would be making his first NFL start, which at one point had an entire stadium chanting his name.
The scenes of Sunday certainly felt like a Hollywood script, a real tear-jerker for Brock's dad Shawn.
"They're the people at home that just believe in you and they always see the best in you," Purdy said at the podium after the game. "They believed in me when I was the last draft pick and all that kind of stuff. They've always been telling me, 'you're good enough, and we know that you can do it,' and so to see them after that performance meant a lot to me. Very blessed to have them as my family."
The entire football world learned Brock Purdy's name Sunday afternoon.
There's no hiding from the spotlight now with the 49ers playing on national TV for Thursday Night Football against the Seahawks.
"His mindset right now is, 'I'm not done and I haven't done anything, I'm gonna move on to the next game.' That's his mentality, but just to see it all come together was such a special experience," said Jones. "It was incredible."
His former high school coach was far from the only one Purdy impressed.
"[The] kid's awesome," said 49ers star defensive lineman Nick Bosa. "We got a quarterback here."
