Brock Purdy is an ‘early Tom Brady’ and MVP candidate

Even after his superb performance in the San Francisco 49ers’ rout of the Dallas Cowboys, quarterback Brock Purdy still has his doubters. But don’t count FS1 pundit, and notorious Cowboys die-hard, Skip Bayless among them. Bayless is all the way in on Purdy, even comparing him to seven-time Super Bowl-winner Tom Brady, the consensus greatest quarterback of all time.

“My point is, he’s early Tom Brady. He’s on that arc. He is, because he doesn’t do anything wrong,” said Bayless while chatting Monday on FS1’s “Undisputed” with former 49ers cornerback Richard Sherman and former Cowboy great Michael Irvin.

The comparison’s been made before. Both Brady and Purdy were late round draft picks who unexpectedly found themselves on the field after injuries to their team’s starters. Both quarterbacks found immediate success despite not being world-beating athletes, and both players took their teams on prolonged playoff runs in their rookie seasons.

Bayless believes that, like Brady for the better part of the past two decades, Purdy should be taken seriously as an MVP candidate.

“Last week I kept hearing back on this show, ‘Well, [Purdy] only has five touchdown passes to zero interceptions.’ Well now he’s got nine to zero. Is that good enough? He has started and finished 12 games in this league. He’s 12-and-0 in those games. 12-and-0, it’s impossible!” said Bayless. 

Bayless also made it clear he’s sick of hearing people disregard Purdy’s prowess because of the level of talent around him.

“You can say scheme, you can say Kyle [Shanahan], you can say talent, you can say [George] Kittle, you can say Deebo [Samuel], you can say [Brandon] Aiyuk, you can say Christian McCaffrey, you can say all of the above, you still have to play the position at the highest level,” said Bayless. 

“He is way better than Dak Prescott ever thought about being because he is unflappable,” continued Bayless, taking a shot at his favorite team’s quarterback.

The oddsmakers seem to agree with firebrand pundit. Purdy currently has the fifth best odds of any player to win the MVP at +700, according to the Action Network. Purdy’s teammate McCaffrey is right behind him with the sixth best odds at +1400.

While Irvin, Sherman and Bayless were singing Purdy’s praises, not everyone is on board yet. ESPN’s Dan Orlovsky still thinks Purdy is about as talented as Mac Jones, quarterback of the putrid 1-4 New England Patriots, while The Ringer’s Steven Ruiz, the internet’s biggest Brock skeptic, doubled down on his position that the 49ers cannot win a Super Bowl with Purdy at the helm. 

But Bayless clearly has no problem seeing Purdy as a Super Bowl winner. In fact, the pundit is already musing that the 49ers could be the first team since the 1972 Dolphins to pull off an undefeated season.