The Trey Lance trade revisited:

Originally posted by SanDiego49er:
Just crazy how bad that trade was and nobody was ever held accountable.

If you fired every GM or coach that made a really bad draft pick we would see more vacancies than we already get each year. How many tomes did Al davies miss with QB picks. People complaining about giving up those picks in that deal are the same ones that complain that the Niners are terrible at drating in the early rounds.

You can't fault them for missing on Lance. He was a consensus top 10 QB that year.

You can fault them for the trade comp. We gave up WAY too much to move up to #3 from #12.

Originally posted by billbird2111:


Some people must be really bored out of their skulls.

This lol

Originally posted by Sask49erFan:
On August 26, 2023, Lance was traded to the Dallas Cowboys for a 2024 fourth-round pick (Malik Mustapha).

Original trade:

49ers get:

• 2021 first-round pick (No. 3 overall)

Dolphins get:

• 2021 first-round pick (No. 12 overall)
• 2022 first-round pick (No. 29 overall)
• 2022 third-round pick (No. 101 overall)
• 2023 first-round pick (No. 29 overall)

What we lost out on:

Micah Parsons, edge rusher

• Pick: 2021 first-round pick (No. 12 overall)
• Team: Cowboys

Cole Strange, guard

• Pick: 2022 first-round pick (No. 29 overall)
• Team: Patriots

Channing Tindall, linebacker

• Pick: 2022 third-round pick (No. 101 overall)
• Team: Dolphins

Bryan Bresee, defensive tackle

• Pick: 2023 first-round pick (No. 29 overall)
• Team: Saints

What an epic failure. This trade would have got most GM's fired.

Imagine having Parsons who has 52.5 sacks in 63 games and Bresee who has 12 sacks in 2 years (7.5 sacks last year) on this DLine?

This has to be arguably one of the worst trades in NFL history.

Are you bored or just wanted to make yourself angry?

Imagine not being aware of Parson's college profile- they were never taking him. Not a single team that gained from the trade is or was better than us. Let it go.

Originally posted by SanDiego49er:
Just crazy how bad that trade was and nobody was ever held accountable.

Maybe the folk in charge are clearer on the subject of trades and drafting than the average fan.

Woulda, coulda, shoulda.

How about trading a HOF Player, in his prime, for a 5th round pick and DL Brandon Whiting. 😐

Originally posted by SanDiego49er:
Just crazy how bad that trade was and nobody was ever held accountable.

They went to the NFC Championship game both years Lance was here, then the year they traded him away the 49ers went to the SB with the last pick in the draft. What punishment would you like to have for Kyle & John?

Originally posted by Leathaface:
You can't fault them for missing on Lance. He was a consensus top 10 QB that year.

You can fault them for the trade comp. We gave up WAY too much to move up to #3 from #12.

nah, i don't fault any team doing whatever they can to find their franchise qb. in retrospect it was an awful trade up and awful pick, but they took a swing cuz you have to

Originally posted by DonnieDarko:

Originally posted by Leathaface:
You can't fault them for missing on Lance. He was a consensus top 10 QB that year.

You can fault them for the trade comp. We gave up WAY too much to move up to #3 from #12.

nah, i don't fault any team doing whatever they can to find their franchise qb. in retrospect it was an awful trade up and awful pick, but they took a swing cuz you have to

I agree and fans forget that at that time the Niners were considered to have the most talented roster overall in the league. All they really lacked then was a QB that could stay healthy and make a few plays on his own if needed. They thought Lance could be the guy but obviouly he wasn't. He had way to little experience. Compare him to guys like Purdy, Bo Nix, Penix and some others that are coming out of college with 4 or more years as a starter. After 4 years in the NFL Lance still hasn't had as much experience as those guys.

Originally posted by Afrikan:
How about trading a HOF Player, in his prime, for a 5th round pick and DL Brandon Whiting. 😐

I hated that trade, but the 49ers didn't have the cap to keep him. And I don't think the wanted to be in SF with Jeff Garcia as his QB.

It wasn't the "Trey Lance trade"

It was the trade-up for the 3rd overall pick 5 weeks before the draft whitout knowing who the f**k they were gonna pick. That was the real problem.

Don't forget that the same off-season they tried to get Stafford and then in the morning of draft day they called the Packers to ask about Rodgers.

They -and I mean Shanahan- were never convinced about Lance and they -and I mean Shanahan- drafted him because they needed a QB that could stay healthy unlike Garoppolo and they -and I mean Shanahan- went with the 20-yrd old kid with 300 throws in division AA because he was the QB with the most powerful arm of the ones available.

The real issue with that trade was that since the beginning they -and I mean Shanahan- never had a real plan for a QB like Lance and we saw it since the first game of the season when in the first drive Garoppolo moved the offense to the red zone and then Lance came in to score the TD and then we never saw that again.

2-QB system?
Giving some live reps to Lance here and there to make him get experience?
Changing the offense to make Lance fit in?

Shanahan never decided what he wanted to do with Lance and to make things worse for him he kept Garoppolo 2 more seasons and we know that the players loved Garoppolo to the point that they never accepted Lance as their new commander.

Lance never had a chance with us and I remember Shanahan saying "I let Trey down" when they traded him and he was right.

For comparison, Andy Reid traded-up from 27 to 10 to get Mahomes and then he spent that spring in Texas Tech to learn the spread offense to realize how to mix his system with the offense Mahomes ran and then in that first season he let him on the bench to make him learn from Alex Smith and the following year he dumped Alex to make Mahomes the absolute starter.

That's a real plan about how to develop your young and raw QB.

Originally posted by Monsterniner:
It wasn't the "Trey Lance trade"

It was the trade-up for the 3rd overall pick 5 weeks before the draft whitout knowing who the f**k they were gonna pick. That was the real problem.

Don't forget that the same off-season they tried to get Stafford and then in the morning of draft day they called the Packers to ask about Rodgers.

They -and I mean Shanahan- were never convinced about Lance and they -and I mean Shanahan- drafted him because they needed a QB that could stay healthy unlike Garoppolo and they -and I mean Shanahan- went with the 20-yrd old kid with 300 throws in division AA because he was the QB with the most powerful arm of the ones available.

The real issue with that trade was that since the beginning they -and I mean Shanahan- never had a real plan for a QB like Lance and we saw it since the first game of the season when in the first drive Garoppolo moved the offense to the red zone and then Lance came in to score the TD and then we never saw that again.

2-QB system?
Giving some live reps to Lance here and there to make him get experience?
Changing the offense to make Lance fit in?

Shanahan never decided what he wanted to do with Lance and to make things worse for him he kept Garoppolo 2 more seasons and we know that the players loved Garoppolo to the point that they never accepted Lance as their new commander.

Lance never had a chance with us and I remember Shanahan saying "I let Trey down" when they traded him and he was right.

For comparison, Andy Reid traded-up from 27 to 10 to get Mahomes and then he spent that spring in Texas Tech to learn the spread offense to realize how to mix his system with the offense Mahomes ran and then in that first season he let him on the bench to make him learn from Alex Smith and the following year he dumped Alex to make Mahomes the absolute starter.

That's a real plan about how to develop your young and raw QB.

you wrote all that leaving out the fact that Trey Lance broke his finger in the preseason of his rookie season. it not only affected his throwing but also his opportunities to play.

Originally posted by DonnieDarko:

Originally posted by SanDiego49er:
Just crazy how bad that trade was and nobody was ever held accountable.

They went to the NFC Championship game both years Lance was here, then the year they traded him away the 49ers went to the SB with the last pick in the draft. What punishment would you like to have for Kyle & John?

Public wedgies

Jokes aside, the consequences of the Lance trade were evident last season and will ripple for the next few seasons.

Three reasons why I don't go ballistic over the Trey Lance trade like most people:

1) 2021 (just like 2025) is such a different atmosphere from say 2015 and prior in the NFL. QB was/is everything, and losing to Mahomes and Allen in a 10 month span or so affected Kyle "fine I'll make this RG3 guy work" Shanahan so much, that he drafted far away from what his prototype is.

If you want to ding Kyle for not pursuing Brady in the 2020 offseason, I get it, even though it would've been a bit more rash back then than now with hindsight.

2) The Niners still managed to go to go far in the NFC playoff race despite the Lance miss. 2021, 2022, 2023, all NFC championship game appearances, and a Super Bowl appearance after trading Lance away.

For any team to miss out on a lot of draft capital and still do that means they've done a really great job overall.

3) No Purdy, most likely. I would say there's a 97% chance Brock Purdy is not just not a Niner, but also not a $54 million QB either...a very possible backup QB somewhere in the league. So he should definitely be super grateful the Niners drafted himself but Lance as well.

Granted it was just a season later and he was a Mr. Irrelevant, but I assume that had we not drafted Lance, Garoppolo is either still around for awhile longer and/or they go after a different QB in free agency (not sure if any would've been available.....Mayfield?). Maybe there's a possibility that Garoppolo would still have been QB, Purdy would've been drafted anyway, and the inevitability of Garoppolo getting hurt would've led to Purdy anyway.

Maybe. We had Sam Darnold as a backup, but seems like he could've been a high end starter for this team, as they've always liked the guy.

Now, if let's say we didn't make the trade and took Parsons. Yeah, definitely a better defense.......is it enough to beat KC in a bowl? Possibly. Hard to say.

It just hasn't been awful for the 49ers, except maybe last season. If the Niners recover this season to be a powerful team again, I hope we never have to hear about Lance ever again in this context. It's not like we had Purdy and tried to do better and failed....it was Garoppolo, and even with hindsight it was still the right thing to do most likely.

Look at the team now - if we didn't have Purdy, there would be a lot of lowered expectations around here.

Hopefully we start turning things around and this will be the Kyle 3.0 Niners that gets it done (1.0 - 2017-2020, 2.0 2021-2024, 3.0 - 2025).