On Friday’s Pat McAfee show, San Francisco 49ers tight end George Kittle spoke out on the team’s quarterback competition between veteran Jimmy Garoppolo and second-year man Trey Lance. Garoppolo was the predominant starter for the team in 2021, and helped the 49ers to an appearance in the NFC Championship game against the Los Angeles Rams — a game that ended in a 20-17 loss for San Francisco.
Before the 2021 draft, the 49ers traded their 2021, 2022 and 2023 first-round picks, along with a 2022 compensatory third-round pick to the Miami Dolphins for the right to move up from the 12th pick to third, and the right to make Lance the third quarterback taken, after Jacksonville’s Trevor Lawrence, and Zach Wilson of the Jets. While Lawrence and Wilson got a lot of playing time in their rookie campaigns, Lance appeared in just six games, with just two starts, completing 41 passes in 71 attempts for 603 yards, five touchdowns, and two interceptions. Lance also ran 38 times for 168 yards and a touchdown.
It’s not yet known who will be San Francisco’s starting quarterback in 2022, but Kittle was clear that Lance was assisted greatly by Garoppolo’s willingness to mentor him, and that Lance’s potential is already clear.
"Once Trey Lance gets a lot of reps just watch out because some of the things I've seen em do in practice mind boggle me" ~@gkittle46#PMSLive #FTTB pic.twitter.com/CAw2OzTGvI
— Pat McAfee (@PatMcAfeeShow) May 20, 2022
“Jimmy G could have been an [expletive] and said, ‘It’s not my responsibility to take care of this guy and put him under my wing,'” Kittle said. “But instead, what he did is, he was professional every single day. He didn’t complain one time. He showed up. He worked. He started. He got us to an NFC Championship game, and he helped Trey along the way. I think Trey took a bunch of steps forward, and for Trey to become a really good quarterback in the NFL, he needs reps. And once this guy gets a lot of reps, watch out. Because some of the things I’ve seen him do in practice mind-boggle me. So, I’m waiting for it.”
A lot of people are waiting for it, given Garoppolo’s limitations as a quarterback. He’s a good player with some clear ceilings, while Lance, with his dynamic athleticism and outstanding am talent, is more of an open book. When he was on the field, Lance made some mistakes, but he also proved able to make tight-window (sometimes risky) throws that Garoppolo simply isn’t equipped to.
Garoppolo’s 49ers career may or may not have ended with this interception against the Rams in the NFC Championship game — a play that summarized a lot of the frustrations people have with Garoppolo.
Lance may also be the one to truly unlock Deebo Samuel’s potential, as Garoppolo left too many throws on the table that Samuel could have caught… if only they were released.
“I think what I learned most about Trey is I learned that he was the person that we were banking on him being,” head coach Kyle Shanahan said of Lance in February. “He’s the good person, the good human that we thought, he has the work ethic we thought, he’s as smart as we thought, he’s got a natural charisma to him that I believe as a leader. He’s kind of the baby on the team this year, just in terms of his age, but he has a presence to him that people will gravitate to when he has that position. Stuff I thought he learned the most of was this was his first time playing in almost two years. And we asked him to do a lot of different things and just watching him play in the pocket, watching him work on play actions that he didn’t get to do as much in college. He had never done a seven-step drop before, which is how a lot of play actions are. He’d always done five and trying to mess with his feet and timing of all different types of plays. I thought it was great for him. It was great experience for him and I think it was good that he could kind of sit back and watch all that and not get forced into stuff where he’s learning it and doing it for the first time at full speed versus NFL defenses, because it’s a lot harder.
“But yeah, towards the end of the year, I never thought about just trying to get him in because I knew that was about to come. When we were 3-5, that was kind of the breaking point where I knew it was getting close. I know everyone else thought it was there, which I agreed it was getting close to there, but once we won that game and went to 4-5 and ended up winning four in a row, I thought we had a chance. And when you’re doing that, you don’t want to mess with the team. I would’ve done it for strategic reasons, if I thought it helped, but I wasn’t going to do it just to help Trey get 4-6 plays and ease him in at that time, because that’s not what we were thinking about at that time. We were thinking about how we can get our team to the playoffs. And once we got to the playoffs, we were thinking how we could win each game, because we knew only one team was going to be happy at the end. And we’re not that happy.”
The Garoppolo-Lance situation will be one of the most fascinating in the NFL’s new season, if Garoppolo isn’t traded by then. But Lance is apparently ready to boggle some minds.