Trey Lance’s readiness to play quarterback in the NFL is the 49ers’ single biggest question mark going into the offseason. That makes it the talking point when it comes to assessing what’s next for San Francisco in the post-Jimmy Garoppolo era.
Former Chiefs quarterback Joe Montana, who was drafted by the 49ers in the third round of the 1979 draft, weighed in on the 49ers’ QB situation in a pre-Super Bowl interview and gave a popular take: Lance isn’t ready.
This take isn’t necessarily wrong, but it’s flawed because of course Lance isn’t ready to play. If he was he would’ve started for San Francisco in the NFC championship game. The problem with the “he isn’t ready” take is that it leaves out crucial months of Lance’s development and picks him up on January 30 and drops him into Week 1 of the 2022 season. In that event, sure, Lance is not ready.
The problem with that line of thinking is it leaves out the entire offseason he has to hone his mechanics. He has an entire offseason to learn more of the playbook and become more comfortable so he’s not holding onto the ball for as long. There are training camp reps to be had and preseason games to play.
It stands to reason Lance will emerge from all of those things at least a little bit better quarterback than he was when San Francisco’s 2021 season ended. That’s especially true if head coach Kyle Shanahan’s assessment of Lance from his end-of-season press conference is correct.
“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,” Shanahan said on February 1. “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.”
The question should not be whether Trey Lance is ready to play right now. His readiness in February is of no relevance to a team that isn’t going to play until September. The question is how ready will Lance be by then, and that’s something we won’t know the answer to until training camp when he gets his first real reps. We’ll also get glimpses in preseason games where his accuracy, processing and decision-making will all be on display.
If he’s struggling through July and August, then the conversation is open to whether he’s ready to start for a team that expects to contend for a Super Bowl. Until then it’s all guessing, even for Joe Montana, based on a version of the quarterback that figures to be much different than the one who starts Week 1 of next season.