49ers’ Trey Lance reveals what helped most in his development in 2021

It shouldn't come as a surprise that San Francisco 49ers quarterback Trey Lance learned the most from his two starts in his first NFL season. Early in the season, Kyle Shanahan utilized his rookie passer to confuse and take advantage of opposing defenses. For the most part, the strategy worked. However, the 49ers head coach soon realized that the limited use of Lance made calling plays more challenging.

"What got hard for me is I'd see all this stuff in the game and be like, 'Oh, this is going to be perfect to put Trey in and have a runner go against this stuff,'" Shanahan said in December. "Then you bring him in on 3rd-and-1 or 1st-and-goal on the five, and you get a completely different defense. And it's not at all what I was expecting because I started to realize, 'Oh, when Trey comes in, it's kind of the first play of the game for him and how the defense is viewing him.'

"… So it became more of just a pain for me, and I didn't feel like you were getting the best looks because we didn't know what to expect. It's something I didn't enjoy, but it's something that we can always use."

Lance spoke with Rich Eisen on Friday and agreed that his brief appearances in games made things more difficult because of the challenge of not knowing what to expect from opposing defenses. It also prevented Lance from getting into any kind of rhythm.

"If I don't get into a rhythm or if I don't play multiple downs in a row, it's hard to call a play blindly," Lance said on The Rich Eisen Show. "It's like calling a trick play, almost."

Things were different for Lance's two starts, though. First, with him in for most of the reps, it allowed him to see how defenses adapted to him. Plus, the preparation leading to those games was highly beneficial.

"Those were, I think, the weeks I got better the most," Lance said. "Not that I didn't get better every week but, obviously, taking reps. And every single rep you get, you get better from. So for me, those two weeks were huge, I thought, in my development.

"I was super thankful for those [starts] because I think both of them, again, I learned so much from not only just the game, but the practices, walkthroughs, and everything. Just being in that role throughout the week was huge for me."