San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan joined KNBR this morning. The topic of Trey Lance came up, as expected. The 22-year-old quarterback embarks on his first season as a full-time NFL starter after spending all of his rookie 2021 campaign as Jimmy Garoppolo's backup.
Now, Garoppolo is Lance's backup, and the offense belongs to the second-year quarterback. Some still doubt the team's faith in Lance.
Brian Murphy and Kerry Crowley asked Shanahan about former Bears defensive end Corey Wootton's comments about that lack of faith, saying Justin Fields will outplay Lance on Sunday. The NFL player turned podcaster points to the Niners not making Lance a team captain and bringing back Garoppolo as proof that they lack faith in their young quarterback.
How much does that kind of outside noise affect the 49ers coach?
"Zero," Shanahan responded while laughing. "It sounds like a fan talking, and someone who really doesn't know what they're talking about. Not to insult a fan or anything, but there wasn't anything substantial right there. That's just reading headlines and trying to make that into a football opinion."
The noise is there, though, and it isn't likely to go away anytime soon. While the 49ers coach doesn't seem concerned with it, he tried to explain the team's thinking this offseason.
"Guys, this is Trey's first year starting for us," Shanahan said. "We were letting go of a $24 million starting quarterback to do that. We got him back for a backup price. I don't think that has to do with not having faith in your starter. That never would have happened if it just didn't come to fruition there. We were very fortunate that happened. So we obviously were willing to go a different direction, and we ended up having something fall into our lap.
"The whole captain vote [argument] is kind of a joke to me. [Defensive end Nick] Bosa finally got enough votes to get up to number six, and look at those six people in front of Trey. I think they are all pretty worthy of that vote. And just to give it to a guy in his first year [as a starter] just because he's a quarterback, the only reason we would have done that is to avoid questions and articles, and that's not really what we do. We try to do what the team votes for."
Earlier this week, Shanahan shared that Lance just missed being among the six team captains. He came in seventh in the team voting.
Shanahan added, "If I would have guessed the votes, I would have guessed he would have been right where he was at. So I've got really no problem with it at all."
You can listen to the entire conversation with Shanahan below.
