How Mr. Irrelevant became the most beloved underdog in sports - ESPN

ON THE THIRD DAY of the 2022 draft, Brock Purdy's mom brought home cake and balloons as he waited to be picked. He immediately gave her his version of a dirty look, which is just a slightly raised eyebrow.

«Mom, I told you I don't want a party,» he said. «I might not even get picked.»

«I know, I know,» Carrie Purdy said. «This is just for us to celebrate a little after it's over. But if you do get picked...»

«You already told everybody in town to come over, didn't you?» Brock asked.

Carrie smiled. He knows her too well. She told about 100 friends and neighbors in Maricopa County, Arizona, to hustle over if they saw Brock's name get called. «I'll pop all the balloons and eat the cake myself if you don't get picked, OK?» she said. Brock laughed and nodded in agreement. He could live with that.

The draft's sixth round began to drag on, and Purdy and his younger brother, Chubba, eventually stopped watching the draft and decided to hit Chick-fil-A. Purdy kept getting a steady string of calls from his agent saying that a certain team hoped to get him… but was picking somebody else. He'd go into another room and come back and say, «They want me as an undrafted free agent.»

He came to grips with the idea that he'd have multiple interested teams to choose from if he went undrafted, so he ducked out for some chicken sandwiches. They came back an hour later, and Brock noted that the house was a little fuller with friends and neighbors who ignored the «if he gets drafted» stipulation of the party invite.

Purdy doesn't really get mad, though. One of his superpowers is a blood pressure that never seems to surge, which is something the NFL combine hasn't quite figured out how to measure. So Purdy just shook his head and plopped down on