Akbar Gbajabiamila joined Sports Illustrated and said that 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy is proving why the label for the last pick in the NFL Draft is insulting.
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00:00 All right, so I have a very special guest to my left.
00:04 We went to the same school.
00:06 That's right, go Aztecs.
00:07 We played for the same organization in the Raiders.
00:10 Yep.
00:11 Raiders.
00:12 We both like to smile and laugh a little bit.
00:15 I got my dog Akbar, B. Jamila right now.
00:17 How you doing, baby?
00:18 I'm doing good, man.
00:19 How are you doing?
00:20 I'm good.
00:21 I'm excited now that I see you.
00:22 Yeah, man.
00:23 I'm excited now that I see you.
00:23 Yeah, golf game still good?
00:25 Golf game is okay.
00:26 Okay.
00:27 My back is a little sore in the morning now.
00:27 Oh, is that right?
00:28 But I'm not mad about it.
00:29 You know what that mean though, right?
00:30 What does that mean?
00:31 It means you're getting old.
00:32 No, no, no.
00:33 I'm not old yet because I can still do the broom trick.
00:35 You could do the broom trick.
00:36 No, no, I couldn't, no.
00:38 But see, 'cause what had happened was...
00:40 (laughing)
00:42 Real quick, man, I wanna give you your flowers, man.
00:44 Obviously, I've been seeing you since I was in college
00:48 at USC and to see everything that's transpired
00:51 with you over the years, being on TV, on big time TV shows,
00:58 and talking to you on the phone about things,
00:59 I just wanna congratulate you
01:00 with everything you got going, dog, and keep going.
01:02 I know the sky is not the limit for you, dog.
01:05 You're gonna keep it going.
01:06 I wanna ask you a little personal question.
01:09 Yeah.
01:10 Back in the day, you were selling turf at a time.
01:12 Yeah.
01:13 Did you ever see yourself being here where you're at today,
01:17 killing the way you're killing?
01:19 You know what, no.
01:21 I'd be honest, there was a time where you start pushing
01:23 towards your career and you want it to happen right now
01:28 and it doesn't happen.
01:29 I was trying to find a way to break into the broadcast.
01:33 I didn't have a big NFL career,
01:34 and so sometimes if you don't have that big name,
01:37 people are gonna go like,
01:38 "Oh, do we wanna give him opportunity?
01:39 "Who knows him?"
01:40 And it was hard for them to see talent.
01:43 And so for a minute, I was pushing
01:46 and nobody was giving me that opportunity.
01:48 And so I said, "You know what?
01:49 "I probably need to make a pivot.
01:51 "Maybe I'm pipe dream.
01:53 "This is a pipe dream."
01:54 So I started selling turf.
01:56 I was going to all the parks and schools,
01:58 trying to push turf for everybody to turn from grass to turf.
02:02 And that was hard.
02:03 Go out there selling million dollar products.
02:06 Those things are expensive.
02:07 You know what I mean?
02:08 So I was a salesman,
02:09 but I was a salesman trying to sell million dollar products.
02:11 Yo, give me a million dollars.
02:12 Yeah, right, now.
02:13 But yeah, no, I didn't see that.
02:15 I thought that was gonna be my journey.
02:16 I was gonna have to figure out a way to get in
02:18 and find another job opportunity.
02:20 And it was that one audition, my agent says,
02:24 "Hey man, NFL Network has this thing,
02:26 "NFL Fantasy, and they got an audition.
02:28 "Do you want to do it?"
02:29 And I didn't even tell my wife
02:30 because I told her I had given up
02:31 on the broadcasting dream.
02:33 And so I remember sneaking my suit into my bag
02:37 and telling her, "Bye babe, I'm gonna go sell some turf."
02:40 And I snuck my suit in to my bag
02:44 and then went to the audition.
02:46 And then I got the job and I'm like, "Oh shoot."
02:49 I mean, they had all the big names out there
02:51 auditioning for this spot.
02:53 And I was like, I didn't think I was gonna get it
02:54 'cause there's too many big head names,
02:56 you know what I mean?
02:57 And that changed my life.
02:58 So me getting that jumpstart at the NFL Network
03:01 really changed my trajectory.
03:03 And the next year I got American Ninja Warrior.
03:05 That is fantastic, ladies and gentlemen.
03:08 Wifey, he made the right decision.
03:11 Okay, all right, let's segue into the Super Bowl.
03:14 We got Brock Purdy.
03:18 Obviously everybody's talking about he,
03:19 you know, Dion came on yesterday,
03:21 said he's the best hit in the story in history
03:23 or in the last two decades.
03:25 You got guys like Cam Newton saying he's not a game changer,
03:28 he's a game manager.
03:29 How do you view Brock Purdy?
03:33 And what do you think he has to do this weekend
03:35 in order to get a win?
03:36 Well, first off, I'm gonna give him his credit
03:38 in saying that Brock Purdy is relevant.
03:41 You know, I think he might be,
03:43 single-handedly might be the guy to change the narrative
03:46 about the last pick in the NFL.
03:49 That, you know, I think it's an insulting title
03:51 to call the last person Mr. Irrelevant.
03:53 I know it's supposed to be in fun,
03:55 but I think what he's showing is that
03:57 you might put me on a rating system
04:00 and that rating system might keep me in this box,
04:03 but I'm gonna bust out of it with my talent.
04:05 He's shown that he's had the talent, he's got the IQ.
04:08 Now, this whole game manager, I've never understood that
04:12 because every quarterback is a game manager.
04:15 Like, so I was like, what are you saying?
04:17 Like, you still have to manage it
04:18 whether you're managing with your arm talent,
04:20 your brain, your legs, you're still managing the game.
04:23 Brock Purdy is a talent quarterback.
04:24 I got nothing to say about him.
04:25 I don't know that he's a, you know,
04:28 like this revolutionary talent that we've seen.
04:32 I've seen better quarterbacks.
04:34 Like, I'm not gonna say Brock Purdy,
04:36 I watch him, oh, that's the best quarterback I've ever seen.
04:38 That'd be hyperbole.
04:39 Now, on the other side though, Patrick Mahomes,
04:43 that's a quarterback that's a dog.
04:44 He's got that it factor, right?
04:46 I don't think Purdy has the it factor,
04:49 but he gets the job done.
04:51 So, to answer your question,
04:54 I think both Cam Newton and Deion Sanders are correct
04:57 in that Brock Purdy is talented
05:00 and he's a game manager from Cam Newton.
05:02 - Okay.
05:03 - Yeah, so two things can be true.
05:04 - Okay.
05:05 Patrick Mahomes.
05:06 - Yeah.
05:07 - Do you think he's already in the top five quarterback
05:10 of all time consideration?
05:12 - Top five, oh boy, you would have to,
05:14 that then forces me to think about who the top five.
05:17 You start saying names like Tom Brady, Joe Montana, right?
05:22 You start thinking about these names.
05:24 Ooh, I'm gonna go ahead and say,
05:25 because he's at such a young age,
05:28 and I think in every season he's played in the NFL,
05:33 he's been in the AFC Championship game.
05:35 He's been into what, four of the last five Super Bowls.
05:39 - Super Bowls.
05:40 - That's, I mean, tell me who else has done that.
05:43 You know what I mean?
05:43 - The only person that maybe did it was Tom Brady,
05:46 but he didn't do it in that magnitude.
05:48 - Yeah, he's at the,
05:49 the only thing that's holding Patrick Mahomes
05:52 from being in that number two spot behind Tom Brady
05:56 is the fact that we just don't have enough years on him.
05:58 But for what we have on him,
06:00 he's already at the number five spot.
06:01 - Okay.
06:02 - He's already at the number five spot.
06:03 - Okay, so let's talk about the game in general.
06:06 What do you think, who do you think is the X Factor?
06:09 I think the X Factor is just gonna be one of the defenses.
06:12 I think whoever is gonna win that game,
06:14 their defense is gonna-
06:15 - Chris Jones and company.
06:16 - Okay.
06:17 - Yeah, Chris Jones and company.
06:18 I mean, and this is where we're gonna see,
06:19 I think they're gonna harass the hell
06:21 out of that offensive line for the 49ers.
06:23 And they're gonna come and bring different pressure
06:25 from different ways.
06:26 Brock Purdy, you talk about managing the game.
06:28 He's gonna have to step outside of the box
06:30 and be able to make quick decisions very quickly.
06:32 That defense don't play, man.
06:33 - They don't.
06:34 - They quit school because of recess.
06:35 They don't play.
06:36 You know what I mean?
06:36 Like this team is, I'm telling you, they're the real deal.
06:41 We can talk all day about Mahomes and the offense
06:43 and Andy Reid.
06:44 We've seen that over and over again.
06:45 - It's their defense.
06:46 - It's that defense.
06:47 - They're not scoring a lot of points.
06:48 - No, no.
06:49 - It's the D.
06:50 - They some dogs, man.
06:51 I mean, they're a top defense for a reason.
06:53 - Yeah.
06:54 - So Brock Purdy, I tell you this,
06:56 the narrative will change forever
06:58 if he goes out here and destroys that defense.
06:59 If he destroys and pick apart that defense,
07:02 I mean, just stop talking all the other extra noise
07:04 about Purdy.
07:05 - You know what?
07:07 I don't know.
07:08 I feel like if,
07:08 I feel like they'll start making up excuses.
07:10 I feel like if Brock Purdy carves the defense up,
07:14 they'll say it was Kyle Shanahan.
07:15 - Yeah, yeah, yeah.
07:15 Yeah, yeah.
07:16 You know what it is?
07:17 Because people love to hate.
07:18 People want to,
07:19 it's called confirmation bias.
07:21 - Yeah.
07:22 - Right?
07:23 People want to confirm their bias
07:24 that a seventh round draft pick,
07:26 the last pick in the NFL can't do X, Y, and Z.
07:29 It's the same confirmation bias
07:30 where you get a lot of these networks that go,
07:32 "Hey, you weren't a big name guy."
07:34 - Right.
07:35 - You can't be a good sports analyst
07:37 because you don't have a name.
07:39 You didn't play in a playoff, so on and so forth.
07:40 - Right.
07:41 - They need to validate their feelings.
07:43 So they do that by continuing to put out that narrative
07:46 that Brock Purdy is,
07:47 I think it's rubbish to be quite honest with you.
07:49 It's rubbish.
07:50 The dude can play.
07:51 - Yeah.
07:51 - He can flat out play.
07:52 So you're right.
07:53 They will hate on him.
07:54 They'll find something else to pick apart.
07:56 Well, he threw an interception in the, what?
07:59 But he won the game.
08:00 - Right, right, right.
08:02 Okay, so we're talking about late round pick guys.
08:05 I was a seventh round pick.
08:07 Joe Montana came on here yesterday and said,
08:10 "They still haven't got the draft right."
08:13 - Wow.
08:14 - Guys are still not getting the draft right.
08:15 What do you think about that whole process?
08:17 'Cause I feel like, in my opinion,
08:19 the combine is pointless.
08:21 Because when it comes to players,
08:24 you find players out in that field in competition,
08:27 Brock Purdy, right?
08:28 You don't find players just because they can jump high,
08:32 they can run fast and touch cones.
08:35 We find players in between the white lines.
08:36 So what do you say to hearing that
08:39 from a guy like Joe Montana?
08:41 - I think Joe Montana,
08:42 I mean, you can't disagree with Joe Montana.
08:43 Joe Montana is exactly right.
08:44 I think it's an antiquated process
08:47 and it's just become formality.
08:48 This is what we've done in the past.
08:50 This is what we've always done.
08:51 And we gotta go through the combine
08:53 and gotta go through the draft.
08:54 The draft thing is flawed
08:55 because a lot of people draft based on fear.
08:59 What do I mean?
09:00 You get these general managers and you get these scouts
09:03 and the scouts are gonna go with the easy thing, right?
09:05 They're gonna go out there and say,
09:06 "Hey, everybody likes him."
09:08 I'm gonna go on like,
09:09 they're not gonna say, "You know what?
09:10 I'm gonna take a chance on this dude right here.
09:12 This dude keeps popping up on the film,
09:14 but nobody knows him."
09:16 - Right, right.
09:16 - But if I get that wrong, I'm fired.
09:19 - Yes. - Right?
09:20 Because nobody else knows him.
09:21 So no one's going off of what they feel.
09:24 It's kind of like in the cancel culture, right?
09:26 People say what everyone else wants to hear them say,
09:30 but they don't say what they really feel
09:32 because they're afraid of getting canceled.
09:34 These scouts and these general managers
09:36 are afraid of getting canceled.
09:38 It's job security.
09:39 If there was a little bit more security
09:41 in the infrastructure for the scouts and say,
09:43 "Hey, you know what?
09:44 We messed that one up.
09:45 Keep going hard again."
09:46 Right? - Right.
09:47 - It's like when coaches,
09:48 I love when coaches see a player drop a pass, right?
09:51 You've probably been in that situation.
09:53 - Yeah. - And they go,
09:53 "You know what?
09:54 We're calling it up again.
09:56 We're coming back to you
09:57 and we're gonna give you that ball right now."
09:58 And boom!
09:59 And it gives them the confidence, right?
10:01 - Right. - So I think that's why
10:02 what Joe Montana is talking about.
10:04 It's a flawed system because everybody's operating
10:07 off of fear and wanting to appear right than to be right.
10:11 So many people didn't get drafted
10:13 because that person wasn't a known name
10:16 or a known factor. - Yeah.
10:17 - But they put it in the 30 game.
10:19 Like, I believe in the 30 games.
10:20 Show me 30 games.
10:21 That's going back to Bill Parcells.
10:22 - Yeah.
10:23 - Show me 30 games in college that this guy played
10:25 and I'm gonna tell you who he is.
10:27 - Right. - Right?
10:27 But they're not doing that.
10:28 - Yeah. - They're not doing that.
10:29 - Talk to us about your partnership with Xperia, man.
10:31 - Man, this partnership is special.
10:33 I think you know this as well as I do.
10:37 You know, for me, finances became a real big thing
10:40 once I left the league.
10:41 And I've had this passion to really be able to help people,
10:44 you know, make that transition.
10:46 Not only just former athletes, people in general,
10:48 talking about their financial health.
10:50 You know, Xperia did this survey.
10:53 30% of the people who are watching the big game
10:55 don't have a financial game plan.
10:57 You know, we're getting ready to watch the big game
10:59 where, you know, they've been game planning.
11:01 But 80% of them want to be able to improve
11:04 their credit score.
11:05 And Xperia has rolled out this plan called Xperia Boost.
11:08 They've had it for several years,
11:10 where it helps people to boost their credit score
11:14 by doing everyday thing like paying your utility bills,
11:17 paying for your streaming services.
11:19 And now they've created an ecosystem
11:21 where you have the Xperia Smart Money Digital Checking,
11:25 where you're paying all of those utilities
11:28 and streaming services and all of those things,
11:30 you're paying it from within
11:32 your Xperia Smart Money Digital Checking account.
11:35 And you're helping to increase your credit score.
11:37 The idea used to be, you remember when on college campus,
11:40 they're, "Oh, go get a credit card
11:42 "and that's gonna help you."
11:42 - Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
11:43 - No, that doesn't work, right?
11:45 So this is a way where you're getting credit
11:47 for doing the things you're supposed to do on time.
11:51 And it is a phenomenal program,
11:53 especially when you think about where we are economically.
11:57 You think about high interest rates,
11:59 you think about inflation, you think about cost of goods.
12:02 I mean, I don't know if the last time
12:03 you went to go buy milk, but milk looked like it's like,
12:06 10 bucks now. - It's like 650 in AZ,
12:08 so I know in LA, it's like 10.50.
12:10 - Like 8.50, a cup of, a latte now in LA costs you 10 bucks.
12:15 But you can see what that ends up doing.
12:17 You start overspending, you start overspending,
12:19 that starts stretching your finances.
12:21 Before you know it, you can easily slide into debt.
12:24 And so Xperia is really trying to give people
12:26 the opportunity to improve their credit score
12:29 with the Xperia Boost,
12:31 and it gives them financial flexibility
12:33 and maneuverability because that's what it's about.
12:35 Succeeding in this life is about having that maneuverability.
12:39 - Real quick, before we get up out of here.
12:41 - Oh, before I go, if you want more information,
12:43 go to xperian.com or make sure you download the app,
12:47 Xperia app.
12:48 - Talk about finances for a second.
12:50 What kind of advice would you give
12:54 a late round free agent pick guy coming into the NFL?
12:59 What kind of advice would you give him financially?
13:01 - Don't fall into the, financially,
13:05 don't fall into the locker room trap.
13:08 It's very easy.
13:09 Some people know it as keeping up with the Joneses.
13:12 He has jewelry, I got a,
13:14 like I see this trend happening in the league now.
13:17 Every player now has like a gold necklace
13:20 or diamond necklace underneath their pad.
13:22 I'm like, it just took off this year.
13:24 Last year, there was a sprinkle of it.
13:25 This year, every, I'm like, was there a memo sent out?
13:29 I'm like, that's the dumbest thing I've ever seen.
13:31 I'm like, everybody's got to put on a chain now.
13:33 You know what I mean?
13:34 So I would say just don't fall into that
13:35 and trying to spend and look like you have money.
13:38 I always say it's like, I'd rather have money
13:40 than to look like I have money.
13:42 Right, and a lot of guys get into that.
13:44 They got to have the bag, the designer bags
13:46 and the designer belts and they have to be fashionistas.
13:50 Like, you know, like just chill.
13:53 Like you're in the league, right?
13:54 You just tell somebody I'm in the league
13:56 and you already have that perception.
13:58 - That's the black card.
13:59 - Yes.
14:00 - That's it.
14:00 - All right, man, appreciate you.
14:01 - My guy.
14:02 - Thanks, man.