San Francisco 49ers quarterback Trey Lance certainly has an uncertain future in the NFL, as it looks like he’s competing for the 49ers backup job right now.
Kyle Shanahan bluntly confirmed this week that quarterback Brock Purdy should hold down the team’s starting gig, which may mean that Lance eventually ends up elsewhere in the NFL to contend for a starting job.
However, his situation is far more complex than whatever former NFL general manager Michael Lombardi seems to think about it.
Discussing Lance’s future on his DraftKings show The GM Shuffle, Lombardi made some ridiculously unfair assessments of the quarterback’s general abilities and flatly says that Lance doesn’t have “quarterback instinct.”
“As you go down this road with Lance, it just becomes harder and harder and harder,” Lombardi said on his show, “and you can show all the clips of him moving and all that stuff. At the end of the day when his momma lifted him from the crib, he just didn’t have that quarterback instinct.
“He is not going to be the backup quarterback. I don’t know what they’re going to do with him, but there’s no chance. There is no chance based on the evidence that I’ve seen and based on what I’ve heard.”
The reality of Trey Lance: if a play doesn't goes the way he practiced, it breaks down. When his mom lifted him up from the crib, he didn't have that QB instinct. He won't win the backup QB spot based on what I've seen and heard.
Check out #GMShuffle at https://t.co/b4sYN4CC91 pic.twitter.com/SsDEIyqzJq
— Michael Lombardi (@mlombardiNFL) August 15, 2023
While no one can say for certain that Lance will be able to win a starting NFL job one day, trying to obliterate the basic quarterback instinct that earned him being drafted so high in 2021 is just incorrect.
Lance had plenty of quarterback instincts when he was tearing it up at North Dakota State, and it’s not Lance’s fault that his career has been riddled with injuries so far.
He would’ve started a full season last fall had he not gotten hurt, and it’s not on Lance that the 49ers want to roll with Purdy this fall after the latter played so well.
Plus, the backup quarterback battle definitely isn’t over in San Francisco. Sam Darnold has struggled since being taken at the same pick as Lance, but we don’t hear Lombardi critiquing Darnold’s quarterback instincts.
The jury is still out on how Lance will be as an NFL quarterback, which is far more judicious than Lombardi’s wildly off-base hot takes about the quarterback.
As you can imagine, NFL fans ripped Lombardi for this take.