Los Angeles Chargers QB Trey Lance Thread

Originally posted by TheGoldenNugget:

Originally posted by 49ERnation:

Originally posted by Bloodless:

Originally posted by ninerFate:
Jeremiah a year ago compared Lance to Andrew Luck, while Farrar compared him to Steve McNair. I can definitely see the latter, but I'm not sure about Luck unless he were to really cleanup and tighten his mechanics/footwork. Is it possible for Lance to reach Luck's level? I think they're playstyles are different even if Lance were to reach his ceiling.

Scouting Trey Lance: North Dakota State QB similar to Andrew Luck

Could North Dakota State QB Trey Lance be the next Steve McNair?

I think the obvious comparison to make for Lance is Josh Allen. That is not to say he will or wont be as good as Allen. Lance has to work on the consistency with his accuracy. But IMO Josh Allen is by far his best comparison out of any NFL player who has ever played. especially from a physical standpoint. From their builds, running ability, and Arm strength. Very close/similar in those areas.

I'd actually make the case for a cam Newton comparison. He was a great dual threat QB prospect coming out of college with nice size.

EWWWWW Scam sucks at throwing the ball. Lance has a way better ball than Scam.

Cam newton is a bad comp and if Lance was white we wouldn't hear Cam at all...Lance isn't the most accurate QB in this draft class (still accurate overall) BUT Newton was even worse. Newton wasn't known for his football IQ and just the intangibles are massively different between the two.

Originally posted by NYniner85:

Originally posted by a49erfan77:

Originally posted by NYniner85:
NC this is why we can't trust the media or point out what MM and the Peter King's of the world have said.

John Lynch on media's "speculation" per Breer:

"It became kind of fun. Just sitting back & watching people make stuff up—I can't believe this guy's saying this!"

For fans, how can we ever really believe some of these "insiders" again? It was a complete fabrication #49ers

— Al Sacco (@AlSacco49) May 3, 2021

Like some have said echo-chambering is a real thing...it's like that Telephone Game we played as kids lol.

I hope we learned a valuable lesson that nobody really knows what is going on here outside of Kyle and John.

Pretty much, you kinda end up looking silly end of the day...they don't leak and if they do it's usually for a reason. Fans just need to accept that they won't know s**t until it happens lol.

Eh next offseason and fans will be the same.

Originally posted by a49erfan77:
NDSU lost their 3rd game of the season yesterday, after going 17-0 with Lance.

They won 39 straight games. Let's not act like they weren't a power.

Originally posted by NYniner85:

Originally posted by TheGoldenNugget:

Originally posted by 49ERnation:

Originally posted by Bloodless:

Originally posted by ninerFate:
Jeremiah a year ago compared Lance to Andrew Luck, while Farrar compared him to Steve McNair. I can definitely see the latter, but I'm not sure about Luck unless he were to really cleanup and tighten his mechanics/footwork. Is it possible for Lance to reach Luck's level? I think they're playstyles are different even if Lance were to reach his ceiling.

Scouting Trey Lance: North Dakota State QB similar to Andrew Luck

Could North Dakota State QB Trey Lance be the next Steve McNair?

I think the obvious comparison to make for Lance is Josh Allen. That is not to say he will or wont be as good as Allen. Lance has to work on the consistency with his accuracy. But IMO Josh Allen is by far his best comparison out of any NFL player who has ever played. especially from a physical standpoint. From their builds, running ability, and Arm strength. Very close/similar in those areas.

I'd actually make the case for a cam Newton comparison. He was a great dual threat QB prospect coming out of college with nice size.

EWWWWW Scam sucks at throwing the ball. Lance has a way better ball than Scam.

Cam newton is a bad comp and if Lance was white we wouldn't hear Cam at all...Lance isn't the most accurate QB in this draft class (still accurate overall) BUT Newton was even worse. Newton wasn't known for his football IQ and just the intangibles are massively different between the two.

Newton very selfish.Very me first

Originally posted by English:

Originally posted by Phoenix49ers:

Originally posted by 49ERnation:
Trey absolutely should sit a whole year to learn the scheme and take his mental reps. Last thing we need is a situation like Miami pulled last year where Ryan Fitzpatrick was playing extremely well then they interjected Tua into the lineup after the bye week. His development had absolutely been stunted and probably his confidence too when they had to go back to Ryan Fitzpatrick after a few games.

I agree with this. Bill Walsh was a huge advocate of giving QBs time to sit and take in the pro game. If Garoppolo's healthy then I think you roll with him, especially after upgrading the OL. You maximize his trade value and don't put any added pressure on Lance to have to run out there right away, maybe use him in some packages that can help boost his confidence but not overwhelming him by throwing too much at him at once. Meanwhile Garoppolo has all the incentive in the world to ball out and show himself to be a QB that several teams will put near the top of their lists.

KC with Alex Smith and Mahomes was a pretty perfect outcome for QB development. That whole year was seemingly good for both players

Yep. There is just no downside to this, for the team, for Garoppolo and for Lance.

I agree and disagree. How is this possible?? Well if by week 8 we are a 500 team, you absolutely shoukd take the risk of playing Lance to see if he could turn the season around.

If he's as smart as they say he is though, it might be earlier.

I'm so happy we didn't draft Manziel 2. When he said he secretly wanted to go to New England I'm pretty sure we didn't have to be secret about him not coming here.

Very good read from Frog on 49ers Reddit concerning what he would do regarding Trey and Jimmy.

In this write up I'm gonna be breaking down the different pros and cons of when to make the transition to our new QB, what he needs to get ready and what it all means for Jimmy G.

I'm going to start by saying that I'm not a huge fan of the Lance pick. His tools are elite but he's very inexperienced and his accuracy is suspect at best. I do not like spending 3 1s on a guy we are even questioning if he's ready to go right away. That said, a big part of the evaluation of him has to be how he has spent the last few months preparing to move to the NFL. Our FO surely have detailed knowledge of exactly how he has spent that time. For the purposes of this write up I'm going to have to make some assumptions about it, but I think they're fairly reasonable ones.

So to start with, a very half-assed scouting report on Lance to get a baseline of where he was when he last played.

Lance started 17 games on a run heavy pro-style offense at NDSU. He has only thrown 318 passes in live game situations. By pro style I mean that he was expected to play QB in a similar, if maybe slightly simplified, manor to an NFL QB. full read progressions, calling protections, playing under C, plenty of play-action, calling plays using NFL style verbiage instead of sideline signals etc.

Pros

• Ideal size
• Fantastic runner
• Uses his core to generate the power in his throws, allowing him to throw well even if not fully planted
• Very intelligent
• Football junkie
• Above average arm strength
• Great with play fakes
• Natural thrower while on the move
• Careful with the football
• Good touch, especially when throwing deep or to the sideline.

Cons

• Footwork. I'm actually going to expand on this one instead of just leaving it as a bullet point, because it is key to this whole writeup. Lance's footwork is bad. unless it's a standard 3/5 step drop where he gets the ball out right at the end of the drop, he invariably abandons his footwork and throws off balance. When throwing on the move he doesn't even give any consideration to what his feet are doing. It gets even worse if pressured. He tries to rely solely on his arm strength to make throws, which he does have the talent to do, but his ball placement suffers severely.
  
  
• too much wind-up at the start of his throwing motion
  
  
• ball placement is erratic
  
  
• too quick to abandon the pocket under pressure
  
  
• accuracy overall is not great
  
  
• needs to keep his eyes up when pressured, gets distracted and misses open receivers
  
  
• FFS slide or go out of bounds you're gonna get hurt
  
  

What this all adds up to is a guy who has all the tools, has the intelligence and knowledge, but needs to tie all the rest of it together mechanically. His accuracy is bad. There is no other way of putting it. He'll get the ball roughly to his receivers, but with no consistency in where it's going to land. He'll vary between underthrows and overthrows, throwing behind when he should be leading his receiver or leading them by too much. The good news is that when he doesn't rush or ignore his footwork those problems are significantly lessened. There are still some issues with ball placement even when he does use proper footwork. He's a little too cautious, preferring to wait for guys to be open rather than throwing them open. Those are things to be expected of an inexperienced QB though.

So what does he need to do to be ready to play? well there are three big questions that will determine the answer

1. What causes his accuracy problems, and how easy will it be to fix?
2. How quickly can he learn enough of the offense to run it effectively
3. When does the need for in-game experience overtake what he gets out of being an observer?

The first question is the most important for me. And the answer is a firm "I dunno". It's clear that his footwork is problematic and is at least contributing to his accuracy issues. But there's no real way of determining if he just doesn't have a good feel for ball placement until we see him with corrected footwork. If the problem is mostly down to the footwork issues, it's most likely already solved. I said at the top I would make an assumption about where he is now vs where he was the last time we had tape. That assumption is that since his season was cancelled he has spent the last 7 months devoting his time to preparing for the NFL. If he has not corrected the muscle memory for his footwork in that time, he never will and we shouldn't have picked him. I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt and say that he has done exactly that. Whether that corrected footwork stays corrected under pressure isn't guaranteed. that would make it another lack of experience issue

As for how quickly he can learn the offense, we need to look at how quickly others have gotten up to speed. 2017 is a great example because we have both a rookie and non rookie entrant into the offense that gives us a window of the quickest and longest it would take before a newcomer is deemed knowledgeable enough by Shanahan to start.

Brian Hoyer started the season as the starting QB, but was benched in week 6 for being Brian Hoyer. Enter CJ Beathard. CJ wasn't good. But CJ has now been in the offense for years and still isn't good, so I don't think thats really because he wasn't ready to play. CJ also played in a more pro style offense in college and knew the basics of how to play pro ball before entering the NFL. So between the draft and his first start was roughly 6 months. Jimmy Garoppolo was acquired at the very end of October and had his first start at the start of December, so essentially one month.

in both of these cases they were only getting 2nd team reps in practice, which assuming Lance starts out as the backup, is exactly what he'll be doing. It took a vet QB with some starting exp a month to be deemed fit to start, and 6 months for a rookie with a similar background as Lance to be determined ready.

Personally I think Beathard likely had enough of a handle on the offense to play long before he started. I think Hoyer's very strong performance vs the Rams bought him more time starting than he probably should have gotten. I also think the team knew that winning wasn't really in the cards and had no incentive to move on from Hoyer until it became too painful to watch anymore. With Jimmy they had very good reason to rush him out. They had to get a look at him before the season was up.

Jimmy's preparation was strictly getting the playbook down enough that they could call a full, albeit still cut down, offense. I don't think they could have sped that process up any. So the one month is the absolute baseline fastest it can be done. If we assume it would take a rookie twice as long to get comfortable enough with the playbook that still makes them ready to go before the season starts. if it's three times as long that's still nearly falls within the limits of the start of training camp to the start of the season It wouldn't necessarily be the full passing offense when they started, even Matt Ryan took a year before he was fully comfortable with everything Shanahan can throw at a QB, but that's gonna be the case no matter how long you spend studying the playbook. Experience in the system is what brings the comfort.

So, assuming we have a normalish training camp this year, I can only conclude that in terms of the playbook they can get him ready enough to play before the season starts. Jimmy's one month was very fast in part because he didn't have to focus on anything but learning the playbook. The rookie will need to work on a lot more at the same time. Still I don't think it triples how long it would take.

The 3rd question is the one that has brought me to my conclusion on the matter of when to start Lance. If we assume he has corrected his mechanics over the last 7 months (which again I say if he hasn't we're screwed so he better have) then his biggest need by far is experience. He has only thrown 300 passes. That is an absurdly low number. For some it instantly triggers the "He's not ready, sit him" reaction which is a reasonable take. The issue with that approach is that during the season the backups don't get nearly as many reps as the starters. So if you go into the season with him as the backup, it will take much much longer for him to build up that experience. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that if you sit him for the whole season, by the time he's starting week 1 of 2022 it will have been 700 days since he'd taken a single snap in a non exhibition game. That is an absurdly long time for someone whose biggest need is in game experience.

So the conclusion that I have come to is that he should, by all accounts, have more than a good enough football mind to assume he can learn the playbook to a sufficient level by the start of the season. That mechanically many of his issues should already have been fixed and that he needs to throw in live game situations more than anything else.

So with that we turn our attention to the next part. Which is gonna start some fights.

If we take my conclusion that Lance can be made ready to start the season as accurate (which it may not be because I'm an idiot on the internet talking b******t) then the question becomes what is better for the team in the long term, what is better for the team this season, and if the potential benefits to this season outweigh the potential detriment to the long term goal.

When week 1 comes around Jimmy Garoppolo will probably still be a better QB than Trey Lance. Experience alone puts him over the top. So you have to decide whether to start a worse QB. On the surface that seems like a stupid question with an obvious answer, play your best player right? Well in this case Lance's need for experience and Jimmy's injury history make it much more difficult.

So lets look at situations in which the starting job switches from Jimmy to Lance.

• Trey Lance named week 1 starter
• Trey Lance replaces benched Garoppolo
• Trey Lance replaces injured Garoppolo
• Trade Jimmy at the deadline, turn team over to Lance
• Trey Lance replaces Garoppolo in 2022

Those are the only ways this plays out. it is inevitable. You don't take a guy top 3 and not let him start. The week 1 approach carries the risks I describe above, that you are starting a worse QB than another one on your roster. Fact of the matter is though that the other three carry the same risk. Lance might be better than Jimmy. He definitely has a better skill set.

The 2nd option isn't super likely. Jimmy has had bad games but he's never "bench him now" bad. However there is a chance he could have a poor stretch and then you're in an awkward spot. Do you stick with the guy who isn't playing super well or do you move on to the guy you already deemed not ready?

I don't really buy into the whole guy got injured before = guy will get injured again thing. Especially with unrelated injuries like Garoppolo's, but the fact remains he has missed more games for us than he has played. In this scenario you have a similar problem to the Jimmy getting benched scenario, but the reverse. What happens if Jimmy gets a minor injury and Lance plays and makes a bunch of rookie mistakes. The typical school of thought when choosing when to play your rookie is that once you hand the team over, it stays with the rookie. So you can end up in a situation where Jimmy is playing better than Lance, but you really don't want to give him the team back.

The trade one doesn't do it for me, though I like it better than the final option. It's too dependent on factors you can't control to be the plan. If you can find a good trade partner that Jimmy won't veto with his no trade clause, you need Jimmy to be healthy for it to work. Neither of those things are guaranteed and you might just end up with nobody being happy.

The last scenario I touched on the problems with already. 700 days. 700 days between snaps that matter is a ton. And then you've got a QB who is gonna go out there and make the same rookie mistakes you could have gotten out of the way a year earlier. If the question is "what's best for 2022 and beyond" this option isn't a good one. The only way this makes sense is if Lance is so far away from being ready that you don't want him touching the field (in which case you should not have spent those picks on him) or that you're all in on 2021 and don't really care if it hurts the long term plan. The other big problem with this approach? what if you miss the playoffs? You just burnt a year of your new QBs rookie deal, didn't get him any real game experience and paid a guy 25m to not take you to the playoffs. Sitting Lance for an entire season, for me, is the worst option. It's basically a failure unless you at least make it to a championship game.

There's another a piece of the puzzle that I don't think is a particularly big problem for our team specifically, but can be an issue. The locker room. We've got a pretty good culture on our team so I don't think we're super high risk of any rifts there, but QB controversies dividing a locker room is a very real thing. If you've got half your guys thinking it's time to give Lance his shot and the other half saying stick with Jimmy, things can get messy. If Jimmy does go down to a minor injury and Lance doesn't look like a superstar out of the gate things could get really bad if they choose not to hand the team back. Likewise if Jimmy is just playing well enough not to get benched but isn't really helping the team win some in the locker room could start itching for the rookie. It can even become a big point of contention among the coaching staff. Like I said I don't think this is a very likely thing for our team, but it's worth mentioning.

So where does all this leave us? I realize that in going through this I've basically just asked a lot of questions and not really answered any, but thats just how complicated things like this go. Ultimately I know the approach I would take and it may be a bit crazy, especially as I didn't really want the QB in question in the first place, but I think the long term vision has to outweigh the short term prospect of the 2021 season. Winning a superbowl is so incredibly unlikely in a given season, even with a great roster like the 49ers, that to make your decisions based purely on going for it all now and worry about the future later is ludicrously optimistic. I don't think Jimmy is a good enough QB to make that gamble on. Yes he took us to a superbowl once already. But it's not like the Bucs this year where they signed the GOAT and threw it all on the table and said f**k our future cap we're all in. This team is built to have a long window to win a superbowl. If Aaron Rodgers was our QB I might be on board with the idea of going all in, but Jimmy isn't that.

The 49ers should start Trey Lance week 1

Now that brings us to "What about Jimmy?" and this is the part I think where I'm gonna lose half the people who have been nodding along while reading this. I think they need to move on as soon as possible. I do not see the how the benefit of him being on the roster outweighs the 25m cap hit or the potential for locker room problems or the potentially wasted time that your rookie could have been getting better through playing.

I don't get the point of paying that kind of money to someone who you intend to replace as soon as you get the chance. Tear the band-aid off. What I would do is try to trade Jimmy now and if there are no takers I'd just release him. Let him go find a team himself. I know we'd need an experienced backup who can maybe start at first if Lance isn't ready, which is why I would trade for Nick Foles. The Bears just drafted Fields and signed Dalton. They need to move Foles and he's the perfect fit for us. He's just as proven as Jimmy G, has also led a team to a superbowl (and won it) and would cost something like 15m less. He's perfectly capable of starting and provides just as good an example for a rookie.

Now I'm gonna go over some of the obvious questions I'm sure to get in the comments and head them off before you even ask them

but Mahomes sat

Mahomes was a very different situation. He was coming out of an air raid system that is so far away from how things are done in the NFL that he likely had never even called a play in a huddle before. Mechanically he was more of a mess than Lance and he didn't have a 7 month span where he could do nothing but work on improving it before being drafted. He would have had so much more to do to get ready to play that it's not even a valid comparison

Why not hold on to Jimmy and try to get a Bradford trade out of him?

You can never be sure that someone else is going to lose a starter, or that your guy is the one they'll go for. Holding on to Jimmy in hopes of getting a better pick for him in the future than you could right now isn't really viable. Even if you just need to cut him now. If he plays poorly you won't get anything for him. If he gets hurt you won't get anything for him. If nobody else is looking for a QB at the deadline you won't get anything for him. He's a football player, not a football card. Can't just hold on to him and wait for the day he becomes more valuable. Not at his price tag anyway

What if Lance sucks? wouldn't you rather have Jimmy in reserve?

If Lance sucks and doesn't get better nothing about our current team matters anymore. It'll be a new regime in 3 years. 5th year coaches can't miss on a top 3 QB pick and survive. They are going all-in on him. The only question now is whether they push the pile into the middle now that we've seen the flop or if they wait for the turn.

We have a bunch of players on 1 year deals, doesn't that make it seem like they're banking on making a run this year?

I actually think their choices this year show the exact opposite. Yes they signed a bunch of one year deals. But that's true of half the teams in the league this year. Teams had less cap space which led to more players taking smaller deals than they are worth, simply because nobody could pay them what they were worth. There's also some hesitation from the player side because the market values didn't go up as much this year as they normally would have, thanks to the reduced cap. What's more is that the cap is going to go up by a lot over the coming years so getting locked in at today's prices is undesirable. The Niners were ready to let half their depth walk out the door. They didn't have a ton of choice in that regard because of cap restraints, but they were gonna let it happen. They brought back those who didn't get enough on the open market to cheap deals. That is not a all-in approach.

What if you're wrong?

Wouldn't be the first time

Originally posted by TheGoldenNugget:

Originally posted by 49ERnation:

Originally posted by Bloodless:

Originally posted by ninerFate:
Jeremiah a year ago compared Lance to Andrew Luck, while Farrar compared him to Steve McNair. I can definitely see the latter, but I'm not sure about Luck unless he were to really cleanup and tighten his mechanics/footwork. Is it possible for Lance to reach Luck's level? I think they're playstyles are different even if Lance were to reach his ceiling.

Scouting Trey Lance: North Dakota State QB similar to Andrew Luck

Could North Dakota State QB Trey Lance be the next Steve McNair?

I think the obvious comparison to make for Lance is Josh Allen. That is not to say he will or wont be as good as Allen. Lance has to work on the consistency with his accuracy. But IMO Josh Allen is by far his best comparison out of any NFL player who has ever played. especially from a physical standpoint. From their builds, running ability, and Arm strength. Very close/similar in those areas.

I'd actually make the case for a cam Newton comparison. He was a great dual threat QB prospect coming out of college with nice size.

EWWWWW Scam sucks at throwing the ball. Lance has a way better ball than Scam.

Lance is a way better at progressions, boots, and scrambling. He's closer to Luck.

Originally posted by English:

Originally posted by Phoenix49ers:

Originally posted by 49ERnation:
Trey absolutely should sit a whole year to learn the scheme and take his mental reps. Last thing we need is a situation like Miami pulled last year where Ryan Fitzpatrick was playing extremely well then they interjected Tua into the lineup after the bye week. His development had absolutely been stunted and probably his confidence too when they had to go back to Ryan Fitzpatrick after a few games.

I agree with this. Bill Walsh was a huge advocate of giving QBs time to sit and take in the pro game. If Garoppolo's healthy then I think you roll with him, especially after upgrading the OL. You maximize his trade value and don't put any added pressure on Lance to have to run out there right away, maybe use him in some packages that can help boost his confidence but not overwhelming him by throwing too much at him at once. Meanwhile Garoppolo has all the incentive in the world to ball out and show himself to be a QB that several teams will put near the top of their lists.

KC with Alex Smith and Mahomes was a pretty perfect outcome for QB development. That whole year was seemingly good for both players

Yep. There is just no downside to this, for the team, for Garoppolo and for Lance.

In addition it helps smooth over the minor controversy that drafting Trey would have caused among JImmy's friends on the team.

For those of you still apprehensive, or those who inexplicably still think he's "Kap 2.0," watch this video. 30 minutes in you'll see why Shanahan was "obsessed" with Trey back in January.

Trey is a POCKET PASSER who happens to also be very big and fast. And the "accuracy concerns" about him are overblown. He's not especially accurate, but he's not especially inaccurate either. More accurate than Kaepernick, anyway, and Kap "took" the team to the Super Bowl just like Jimmy did, on the back of a great defense and run game. If Kap and Jimmy can do it, so can Trey.

Originally posted by zero:
Very good read from Frog on 49ers Reddit concerning what he would do regarding Trey and Jimmy.

In this write up I'm gonna be breaking down the different pros and cons of when to make the transition to our new QB, what he needs to get ready and what it all means for Jimmy G.

I'm going to start by saying that I'm not a huge fan of the Lance pick. His tools are elite but he's very inexperienced and his accuracy is suspect at best. I do not like spending 3 1s on a guy we are even questioning if he's ready to go right away. That said, a big part of the evaluation of him has to be how he has spent the last few months preparing to move to the NFL. Our FO surely have detailed knowledge of exactly how he has spent that time. For the purposes of this write up I'm going to have to make some assumptions about it, but I think they're fairly reasonable ones.

So to start with, a very half-assed scouting report on Lance to get a baseline of where he was when he last played.

Lance started 17 games on a run heavy pro-style offense at NDSU. He has only thrown 318 passes in live game situations. By pro style I mean that he was expected to play QB in a similar, if maybe slightly simplified, manor to an NFL QB. full read progressions, calling protections, playing under C, plenty of play-action, calling plays using NFL style verbiage instead of sideline signals etc.

Pros

• Ideal size
• Fantastic runner
• Uses his core to generate the power in his throws, allowing him to throw well even if not fully planted
• Very intelligent
• Football junkie
• Above average arm strength
• Great with play fakes
• Natural thrower while on the move
• Careful with the football
• Good touch, especially when throwing deep or to the sideline.

Cons

• Footwork. I'm actually going to expand on this one instead of just leaving it as a bullet point, because it is key to this whole writeup. Lance's footwork is bad. unless it's a standard 3/5 step drop where he gets the ball out right at the end of the drop, he invariably abandons his footwork and throws off balance. When throwing on the move he doesn't even give any consideration to what his feet are doing. It gets even worse if pressured. He tries to rely solely on his arm strength to make throws, which he does have the talent to do, but his ball placement suffers severely.
  
  
• too much wind-up at the start of his throwing motion
  
  
• ball placement is erratic
  
  
• too quick to abandon the pocket under pressure
  
  
• accuracy overall is not great
  
  
• needs to keep his eyes up when pressured, gets distracted and misses open receivers
  
  
• FFS slide or go out of bounds you're gonna get hurt
  
  

What this all adds up to is a guy who has all the tools, has the intelligence and knowledge, but needs to tie all the rest of it together mechanically. His accuracy is bad. There is no other way of putting it. He'll get the ball roughly to his receivers, but with no consistency in where it's going to land. He'll vary between underthrows and overthrows, throwing behind when he should be leading his receiver or leading them by too much. The good news is that when he doesn't rush or ignore his footwork those problems are significantly lessened. There are still some issues with ball placement even when he does use proper footwork. He's a little too cautious, preferring to wait for guys to be open rather than throwing them open. Those are things to be expected of an inexperienced QB though.

So what does he need to do to be ready to play? well there are three big questions that will determine the answer

1. What causes his accuracy problems, and how easy will it be to fix?
2. How quickly can he learn enough of the offense to run it effectively
3. When does the need for in-game experience overtake what he gets out of being an observer?

The first question is the most important for me. And the answer is a firm "I dunno". It's clear that his footwork is problematic and is at least contributing to his accuracy issues. But there's no real way of determining if he just doesn't have a good feel for ball placement until we see him with corrected footwork. If the problem is mostly down to the footwork issues, it's most likely already solved. I said at the top I would make an assumption about where he is now vs where he was the last time we had tape. That assumption is that since his season was cancelled he has spent the last 7 months devoting his time to preparing for the NFL. If he has not corrected the muscle memory for his footwork in that time, he never will and we shouldn't have picked him. I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt and say that he has done exactly that. Whether that corrected footwork stays corrected under pressure isn't guaranteed. that would make it another lack of experience issue

As for how quickly he can learn the offense, we need to look at how quickly others have gotten up to speed. 2017 is a great example because we have both a rookie and non rookie entrant into the offense that gives us a window of the quickest and longest it would take before a newcomer is deemed knowledgeable enough by Shanahan to start.

Brian Hoyer started the season as the starting QB, but was benched in week 6 for being Brian Hoyer. Enter CJ Beathard. CJ wasn't good. But CJ has now been in the offense for years and still isn't good, so I don't think thats really because he wasn't ready to play. CJ also played in a more pro style offense in college and knew the basics of how to play pro ball before entering the NFL. So between the draft and his first start was roughly 6 months. Jimmy Garoppolo was acquired at the very end of October and had his first start at the start of December, so essentially one month.

in both of these cases they were only getting 2nd team reps in practice, which assuming Lance starts out as the backup, is exactly what he'll be doing. It took a vet QB with some starting exp a month to be deemed fit to start, and 6 months for a rookie with a similar background as Lance to be determined ready.

Personally I think Beathard likely had enough of a handle on the offense to play long before he started. I think Hoyer's very strong performance vs the Rams bought him more time starting than he probably should have gotten. I also think the team knew that winning wasn't really in the cards and had no incentive to move on from Hoyer until it became too painful to watch anymore. With Jimmy they had very good reason to rush him out. They had to get a look at him before the season was up.

Jimmy's preparation was strictly getting the playbook down enough that they could call a full, albeit still cut down, offense. I don't think they could have sped that process up any. So the one month is the absolute baseline fastest it can be done. If we assume it would take a rookie twice as long to get comfortable enough with the playbook that still makes them ready to go before the season starts. if it's three times as long that's still nearly falls within the limits of the start of training camp to the start of the season It wouldn't necessarily be the full passing offense when they started, even Matt Ryan took a year before he was fully comfortable with everything Shanahan can throw at a QB, but that's gonna be the case no matter how long you spend studying the playbook. Experience in the system is what brings the comfort.

So, assuming we have a normalish training camp this year, I can only conclude that in terms of the playbook they can get him ready enough to play before the season starts. Jimmy's one month was very fast in part because he didn't have to focus on anything but learning the playbook. The rookie will need to work on a lot more at the same time. Still I don't think it triples how long it would take.

The 3rd question is the one that has brought me to my conclusion on the matter of when to start Lance. If we assume he has corrected his mechanics over the last 7 months (which again I say if he hasn't we're screwed so he better have) then his biggest need by far is experience. He has only thrown 300 passes. That is an absurdly low number. For some it instantly triggers the "He's not ready, sit him" reaction which is a reasonable take. The issue with that approach is that during the season the backups don't get nearly as many reps as the starters. So if you go into the season with him as the backup, it will take much much longer for him to build up that experience. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that if you sit him for the whole season, by the time he's starting week 1 of 2022 it will have been 700 days since he'd taken a single snap in a non exhibition game. That is an absurdly long time for someone whose biggest need is in game experience.

So the conclusion that I have come to is that he should, by all accounts, have more than a good enough football mind to assume he can learn the playbook to a sufficient level by the start of the season. That mechanically many of his issues should already have been fixed and that he needs to throw in live game situations more than anything else.

So with that we turn our attention to the next part. Which is gonna start some fights.

If we take my conclusion that Lance can be made ready to start the season as accurate (which it may not be because I'm an idiot on the internet talking b******t) then the question becomes what is better for the team in the long term, what is better for the team this season, and if the potential benefits to this season outweigh the potential detriment to the long term goal.

When week 1 comes around Jimmy Garoppolo will probably still be a better QB than Trey Lance. Experience alone puts him over the top. So you have to decide whether to start a worse QB. On the surface that seems like a stupid question with an obvious answer, play your best player right? Well in this case Lance's need for experience and Jimmy's injury history make it much more difficult.

So lets look at situations in which the starting job switches from Jimmy to Lance.

• Trey Lance named week 1 starter
• Trey Lance replaces benched Garoppolo
• Trey Lance replaces injured Garoppolo
• Trade Jimmy at the deadline, turn team over to Lance
• Trey Lance replaces Garoppolo in 2022

Those are the only ways this plays out. it is inevitable. You don't take a guy top 3 and not let him start. The week 1 approach carries the risks I describe above, that you are starting a worse QB than another one on your roster. Fact of the matter is though that the other three carry the same risk. Lance might be better than Jimmy. He definitely has a better skill set.

The 2nd option isn't super likely. Jimmy has had bad games but he's never "bench him now" bad. However there is a chance he could have a poor stretch and then you're in an awkward spot. Do you stick with the guy who isn't playing super well or do you move on to the guy you already deemed not ready?

I don't really buy into the whole guy got injured before = guy will get injured again thing. Especially with unrelated injuries like Garoppolo's, but the fact remains he has missed more games for us than he has played. In this scenario you have a similar problem to the Jimmy getting benched scenario, but the reverse. What happens if Jimmygets a minor injury and Lance plays and makes a bunch of rookie mistakes. The typical school of thought when choosing when to play your rookie is that once you hand the team over, it stays with the rookie. So you can end up in a situation where Jimmy is playing better than Lance, but you really don't want to give him the team back.

The trade one doesn't do it for me, though I like it better than the final option. It's too dependent on factors you can't control to be the plan. If you can find a good trade partner that Jimmy won't veto with his no trade clause, you need Jimmy to be healthy for it to work. Neither of those things are guaranteed and you might just end up with nobody being happy.

The last scenario I touched on the problems with already. 700 days. 700 days between snaps that matter is a ton. And then you've got a QB who is gonna go out there and make the same rookie mistakes you could have gotten out of the way a year earlier. If the question is "what's best for 2022 and beyond" this option isn't a good one. The only way this makes sense is if Lance is so far away from being ready that you don't want him touching the field (in which case you should not have spent those picks on him) or that you're all in on 2021 and don't really care if it hurts the long term plan. The other big problem with this approach? what if you miss the playoffs? You just burnt a year of your new QBs rookie deal, didn't get him any real game experience and paid a guy 25m to not take you to the playoffs. Sitting Lance for an entire season, for me, is the worst option. It's basically a failure unless you at least make it to a championship game.

There's another a piece of the puzzle that I don't think is a particularly big problem for our team specifically, but can be an issue. The locker room. We've got a pretty good culture on our team so I don't think we're super high risk of any rifts there, but QB controversies dividing a locker room is a very real thing. If you've got half your guys thinking it's time to give Lance his shot and the other half saying stick with Jimmy, things can get messy. If Jimmy does go down to a minor injury and Lance doesn't look like a superstar out of the gate things could get really bad if they choose not to hand the team back. Likewise if Jimmy is just playing well enough not to get benched but isn't really helping the team win some in the locker room could start itching for the rookie. It can even become a big point of contention among the coaching staff. Like I said I don't think this is a very likely thing for our team, but it's worth mentioning.

So where does all this leave us? I realize that in going through this I've basically just asked a lot of questions and not really answered any, but thats just how complicated things like this go. Ultimately I know the approach I would take and it may be a bit crazy, especially as I didn't really want the QB in question in the first place, but I think the long term vision has to outweigh the short term prospect of the 2021 season. Winning a superbowl is so incredibly unlikely in a given season, even with a great roster like the 49ers, that to make your decisions based purely on going for it all now and worry about the future later is ludicrously optimistic. I don't think Jimmy is a good enough QB to make that gamble on. Yes he took us to a superbowl once already. But it's not like the Bucs this year where they signed the GOAT and threw it all on the table and said f**k our future cap we're all in. This team is built to have a long window to win a superbowl. If Aaron Rodgers was our QB I might be on board with the idea of going all in, but Jimmy isn't that.

The 49ers should start Trey Lance week 1

Now that brings us to "What about Jimmy?" and this is the part I think where I'm gonna lose half the people who have been nodding along while reading this. I think they need to move on as soon as possible. I do not see the how the benefit of him being on the roster outweighs the 25m cap hit or the potential for locker room problems or the potentially wasted time that your rookie could have been getting better through playing.

I don't get the point of paying that kind of money to someone who you intend to replace as soon as you get the chance. Tear the band-aid off. What I would do is try to trade Jimmy now and if there are no takers I'd just release him. Let him go find a team himself. I know we'd need an experienced backup who can maybe start at first if Lance isn't ready, which is why I would trade for Nick Foles. The Bears just drafted Fields and signed Dalton. They need to move Foles and he's the perfect fit for us. He's just as proven as Jimmy G, has also led a team to a superbowl (and won it) and would cost something like 15m less. He's perfectly capable of starting and provides just as good an example for a rookie.

Now I'm gonna go over some of the obvious questions I'm sure to get in the comments and head them off before you even ask them

but Mahomes sat

Mahomes was a very different situation. He was coming out of an air raid system that is so far away from how things are done in the NFL that he likely had never even called a play in a huddle before. Mechanically he was more of a mess than Lance and he didn't have a 7 month span where he could do nothing but work on improving it before being drafted. He would have had so much more to do to get ready to play that it's not even a valid comparison

Why not hold on to Jimmy and try to get a Bradford trade out of him?

You can never be sure that someone else is going to lose a starter, or that your guy is the one they'll go for. Holding on to Jimmy in hopes of getting a better pick for him in the future than you could right now isn't really viable. Even if you just need to cut him now. If he plays poorly you won't get anything for him. If he gets hurt you won't get anything for him. If nobody else is looking for a QB at the deadline you won't get anything for him. He's a football player, not a football card. Can't just hold on to him and wait for the day he becomes more valuable. Not at his price tag anyway

What if Lance sucks? wouldn't you rather have Jimmy in reserve?

If Lance sucks and doesn't get better nothing about our current team matters anymore. It'll be a new regime in 3 years. 5th year coaches can't miss on a top 3 QB pick and survive. They are going all-in on him. The only question now is whether they push the pile into the middle now that we've seen the flop or if they wait for the turn.

We have a bunch of players on 1 year deals, doesn't that make it seem like they're banking on making a run this year?

I actually think their choices this year show the exact opposite. Yes they signed a bunch of one year deals. But that's true of half the teams in the league this year. Teams had less cap space which led to more players taking smaller deals than they are worth, simply because nobody could pay them what they were worth. There's also some hesitation from the player side because the market values didn't go up as much this year as they normally would have, thanks to the reduced cap. What's more is that the cap is going to go up by a lot over the coming years so getting locked in at today's prices is undesirable. The Niners were ready to let half their depth walk out the door. They didn't have a ton of choice in that regard because of cap restraints, but they were gonna let it happen. They brought back those who didn't get enough on the open market to cheap deals. That is not a all-in approach.

What if you're wrong?

Wouldn't be the first time

I didn't read the whole post but as soon as I read the locker room I already knew this dude would be wrong.

Why?? Who were the two leaders of the locker room that sent him the text to welcome him to the team? Jimmy and George.

Secondly, every one said that his footwork was a problem in the first workout, BUT during his first workout lots of people said it actually improved and I'm positive that while working with Beck it improved even MORE.

And when he says there's too much wind up with his throwing motion, that's hilarious bc Fields holds onto the ball a lot longer and his throwing motion isn't nearly as fluid.

He's wrong on many levels. He just sounds like a dude who's so butt hurt and salty like Chris Simms as soon as he started saying Beathard you should have stopped. This is just a trash opinion.

Originally posted by 5_Golden_Rings:
For those of you still apprehensive, or those who inexplicably still think he's "Kap 2.0," watch this video. 30 minutes in you'll see why Shanahan was "obsessed" with Trey back in January.

Trey is a POCKET PASSER who happens to also be very big and fast. And the "accuracy concerns" about him are overblown. He's not especially accurate, but he's not especially inaccurate either. More accurate than Kaepernick, anyway, and Kap "took" the team to the Super Bowl just like Jimmy did, on the back of a great defense and run game. If Kap and Jimmy can do it, so can Trey.

I think his accuracy concerns are underblown. I literally just went back and rewatched 4 of his games on youtube and man! I still don't see how he was the pick over Fields if they wanted a dual threat. For all the talk of him running bootlegs and stuff. His ball placement on those boots rarely leads to YAC to wide open guys. The best thing about his deep balls is he underthrows them to get pass interference.

I tried finding the positive in this pick and I just don't see how he was picked over the other 2. Nothing about his passing suggests he should have been a top 5 pick.

Originally posted by krizay:

Originally posted by 5_Golden_Rings:
For those of you still apprehensive, or those who inexplicably still think he's "Kap 2.0," watch this video. 30 minutes in you'll see why Shanahan was "obsessed" with Trey back in January.

Trey is a POCKET PASSER who happens to also be very big and fast. And the "accuracy concerns" about him are overblown. He's not especially accurate, but he's not especially inaccurate either. More accurate than Kaepernick, anyway, and Kap "took" the team to the Super Bowl just like Jimmy did, on the back of a great defense and run game. If Kap and Jimmy can do it, so can Trey.

I think his accuracy concerns are underblown. I literally just went back and rewatched 4 of his games on youtube and man! I still don't see how he was the pick over Fields if they wanted a dual threat. For all the talk of him running bootlegs and stuff. His ball placement on those boots rarely leads to YAC to wide open guys. The best thing about his deep balls is he underthrows them to get pass interference.

I tried finding the positive in this pick and I just don't see how he was picked over the other 2. Nothing about his passing suggests he should have been a top 5 pick.

VS someone who holds the ball way too long? I love Fields and wish him all the best. But when you've got a better IQ, a quicker release and can reset faster than the other two you take him everytime. Fields literally throws when he sees someone is open it's worrisome. His throwing mechanic is meh. To me, he's the Rosen of this year's draft out of the top 5.

Will there be growing pains? Probably. But I'm willing to bet Lance has a better career than Mac and Fields.

My two players who were gonna bust was Wilson and Fields. Mac landed in the second best situation he could have landed in.

Originally posted by krizay:

Originally posted by 5_Golden_Rings:
For those of you still apprehensive, or those who inexplicably still think he's "Kap 2.0," watch this video. 30 minutes in you'll see why Shanahan was "obsessed" with Trey back in January.

Trey is a POCKET PASSER who happens to also be very big and fast. And the "accuracy concerns" about him are overblown. He's not especially accurate, but he's not especially inaccurate either. More accurate than Kaepernick, anyway, and Kap "took" the team to the Super Bowl just like Jimmy did, on the back of a great defense and run game. If Kap and Jimmy can do it, so can Trey.

I think his accuracy concerns are underblown. I literally just went back and rewatched 4 of his games on youtube and man! I still don't see how he was the pick over Fields if they wanted a dual threat. For all the talk of him running bootlegs and stuff. His ball placement on those boots rarely leads to YAC to wide open guys. The best thing about his deep balls is he underthrows them to get pass interference.

I tried finding the positive in this pick and I just don't see how he was picked over the other 2. Nothing about his passing suggests he should have been a top 5 pick.

Which games did you watch? He's had plenty of beautiful accurate passes. Have you watched every throw of his career, too? For me, having watched every throw of his career, accuracy is neither a strength nor a weakness. He's okay at it. With his other tools and Shanahan's offense, he's accurate enough right now to be successful (assuming he were ready mentally). If he improves his accuracy, he'll be a perennial Pro Bowler.

It seems he was picked over Jones because he has a much stronger arm, is far more athletic, and has far better character.

It seems he was picked over Fields because he's done more Pro-Style things and he doesn't have epilepsy.

Most importantly, he has the attitude, intelligence, humility and aptitude to improve his weaknesses. Yeah, it's a projection. But his odds at improving these things are better than most guys.

I think the 49ers can accomplish both this season. Jimmy G starting and taking most of the snaps while also playing Lance in some sub packages.

Lance definitely had mechanical issues from his 2019 tape that were pointed out by numerous QB evaluators on YouTube

Lance also corrected many of them based on his 1st and 2nd pro day videos

Max Browne provides a good running commentary on it in this video from pro day 1

https://youtu.be/bqqlaT9rnoM