Trey Lance is among the San Francisco 49ers players still dealing with an injury. The rookie quarterback suffered a chipped bone in the index finger of his throwing hand during the team's preseason finale against the Las Vegas Raiders on August 29.
Lance will be limited today, but head coach Kyle Shanahan hopes the rookie can get a little more work in as the team prepares for its regular-season opener against the Detroit Lions.
The coach was asked if Lance can take snaps and throw the football now. He wasn't doing so during Monday's practice.
"I think so," Shanahan responded. "Yeah, we'll see out there today. But yeah, he should be able to do everything. We'll see how he feels when he does it, though."
Lance was later shown throwing footballs during the warmup portion of practice.
#49ers Trey Lance is throwing with a ball for first time at practice since finger injury 10 days ago … and doing so next to starter Jimmy Garoppolo pic.twitter.com/1BKDaxxyHb
— Cam Inman (@CamInman) September 8, 2021
As for Lance's availability for Sunday's game, the coach isn't quite sure about the rookie's status yet.
"We'll see how practice goes today," Shanahan said. "We haven't been able to do anything live yet. I mean, he can do it on air but that will be decided off of Wednesday, Thursday, Friday."
Shanahan was once again asked if he would be willing to officially name Jimmy Garoppolo as the starting quarterback because ... well ... it wouldn't be a Shanahan press conference without that question.
"I'm not going to answer that," Shanahan responded. "I feel like all you guys got to do is look how I've talked since July 27th, I think was my opening day of press conferences. I wish I wasn't being so hard-headed with it, but I feel like you guys are being a little hard-headed [by] keep asking. I feel like I've already answered it, so we'll keep it at that."
Garoppolo spoke with reporters after Shanahan. The quarterback was asked how long he's known he's the starter.
"For a while," Garoppolo responded. "I told you guys a long time ago I had a pretty good feeling about it. I kind of joked about it. But yeah, I always kind of knew where I stood and everything, and now it's official, I guess."
Garoppolo added that the situation never felt like a quarterback competition to him.
"I mean, it's always a competition, but you're competing against the defense during training camp," he said. "Now we're competing against Detroit this week and everything. But that's kind of always where I've been with my head, and it helped me stay steady throughout this whole thing."
Shanahan added that the following players will not practice today.
- WR Jalen Hurd (knee)
- DT Kevin Givens (hip)
- DT Javon Kinlaw (knee)
- CB Emmanuel Moseley (knee)