The 49ers much-ballyhooed quarterback battle hasn’t had much movement through the first eight practices. In fact, nothing has really changed while the QBs get back in the swing of playing NFL football. There could be some real movement coming up though.
During Friday’s practice there was more of the same workload for all four signal callers on the roster.
Brock Purdy is still receiving all of the first-team snaps, and there are no indications that rust is going to keep him from taking the first snap of Week 1 in Pittsburgh. The starting job is his.
The backup QB battle is where things get interesting. Both Trey Lance and Sam Darnold have received some mixed reviews from reporters on site, but both appear to have settled in as camp enters its second week. Neither player has leapt out as either good or bad, and they continue to split the second-team reps. Brandon Allen remains the fourth QB working exclusively with the third-team on days Purdy is practicing.
Lance and Darnold are pretty evenly splitting those second-team reps as well, indicating that neither has pulled ahead in the race to be Purdy’s backup.
An inflection point for that battle could be coming up when the 49ers hold joint practices with the Raiders before their preseason bout in Las Vegas.
Those two practices against an opposing defense, plus some live game snaps should give the 49ers coaching staff enough to start toying with the depth chart some.
This isn’t to say the QB battle will be won or lost on Aug. 10 and 11 during those practices, or during the game on Aug. 13. There will still be almost a month’s worth of practices after that and two preseason games.
However, the even distribution of snaps may change at that point and we may see the leader start to get a handful more snaps with the second team.
For now though nothing is changed and there’s a strong likelihood that head coach Kyle Shanahan doesn’t have an idea of who the backup will be on Sept. 10 in Pittsburgh. These joint practices and a preseason game could go a long way toward changing that though.
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