Is Tyson Bagent the next Brock Purdy? Bears should keep him and find out

Brock Purdy was the final pick of the 2022 NFL Draft, but when injuries forced him into the San Francisco 49ers’ starting lineup, he proved he was anything but irrelevant.

Purdy should’ve been drafted several rounds higher. Sure, that’s hindsight, but he isn’t the first — or last — prospect who has a draft-day slide that later proves to be a mistake. While he was far from spectacular as a rookie, he was good enough to help the 49ers win their final five games and earn a trip in the NFC Championship Game.

And just like that, every NFL team was on a quest to find their Brock Purdy.

Since then, many Bears fans and writers have urged GM Ryan Poles to swing on a quarterback late in the draft, even with Justin Fields on the roster. And while Poles didn’t select a quarterback in the 2023 NFL Draft, he did sign Tyson Bagent, a highly decorated Division II prospect from Shepherd University.

Longtime Bears Talkers know all about Bagent, I’ve written about him many times. He holds every passing record at Shepherd, threw an NCAA-record 159 touchdown passes, and won the Division II equivalent of the Heisman. He threw over 2,000 passes in college and rejected several offers from Division I schools to remain in Shepherd for his senior year.

In 2021, he won back-to-back playoff games with walk-off touchdown passes as time expired.

How has all of that small-school success translated to the NFL so far? In two preseason games, Bagent is 13-of-15 passing for 113 yards and a rushing touchdown, good for a 98.0 passer rating.

Granted, that has come against backups, but Bagent is also playing with the deep reserves on the Bears’ offense. In practice, Bagent has often been the sharpest non-Fields quarterback on the team.

“I saw poise,” head coach Matt Eberflus said of Bagent after the Colts game. “Delivery was there, the accuracy looked pretty good, timing was nice, decision making was good.”

So what do the Bears do with Bagent? They already signed PJ Walker to a 2-year, $4 million contract to be Fields’ backup, and it was assumed that he’d lock up that spot quickly. Instead, we’ve seen Walker struggle this summer and into the preseason. Bagent has outplayed him. Even Nathan Peterman has looked better than Walker to this point.

I don’t think Bagent would clear waivers if the Bears choose to let him go. There are just enough teams in the league currently lacking quarterback depth who would be all too happy to poach him.

Thanks to a new NFL rule, teams can keep three quarterbacks on the active roster and dress them all for gameday, so the Bears could make Bagent their QB3 and keep him that way. Walker could still be the QB2 if they trust the veteran over the rookie.

But what if the Bears only want two QBs on the roster? Can Chicago afford to go into the season with Fields, who has yet to play a full NFL season, and an undrafted rookie from a D2 school as the backup?

I think the answer is a resounding yes. We always say not to scout helmets, meaning forget where a player comes from when evaluating him. If we follow that rule and focus solely on Bagent’s on-field performance, there’s no denying he’s the second-best quarterback on the roster right now.

Bagent’s success is a credit to the Bears’ scouting department. Even if the decision to sign Walker in free agency was a miss, landing Bagent looks like a potentially huge hit. The net result is a win for Chicago.

Do the Chicago Bears have the next Brock Purdy in Tyson Bagent? It’s too early to say. But Poles can’t let another team find that out. Bagent has done enough to make the roster, and whatever he becomes as a pro quarterback should be for the Bears to enjoy.