Jimmy Garoppolo and Trey Lance each threw an interception during Sunday's preseason game against the Los Angeles Chargers. Each throw sparked debate on social media. Did the quarterback throw the football out of reach, or did the wide receiver fail to make the big play? Or was it a little bit of both?

Analyst Greg Cosell is siding with the receivers. The situations in which Garoppolo and Lance found themselves, the ball placement should have been better.


"Whenever a ball hits a receiver's hand, everybody says, 'Oh, he should catch it,'" Cosell said this week on The Rich Eisen Show. "And that's always easy to say, but when you're clean in the pocket, and a receiver's open in this league, you have to put it right on his hands. That's NFL quarterbacking.

"In that situation, Rich, you don't want to ask your receiver to make a great catch. If you're clean in the pocket and the receiver's open, the ball's got to be put on his hands. Lance has to get better at that as well. He double-clutched a few times. He did that in his first game (against the Chiefs) as well."

That leads to what Cosell feels is the biggest single flaw in both quarterbacks' play. That's right; the analyst identified the same shortcoming for both Garoppolo and Lance. Of course, the biggest difference is that Garoppolo is a seasoned veteran, and Lance, 21, has only played in two preseason games.

Neither quarterback is consistently putting the football where it needs to be, even under good circumstances.

"I think the concern with Jimmy G ... is just the ball placement with Jimmy G is not as precise as you would like it to be within that offense because that is a very precise offense," Cosell said. "We know Jimmy G can execute. He's done so.


"The question with Lance is not the physical traits, but it becomes the execution of the specific plays. And his ball placement is not as precise as it needs to be either."

With both quarterbacks exhibiting flaws, why not just start Lance rather than Garoppolo? The 49ers surrendered a haul of future draft capital to trade up in the draft for him. Lance, not Garoppolo, is clearly the quarterback of the future.

While Lance has shown flashes of the quarterback he could become, he is still a rookie, and the Niners feel they have a championship roster in place. Still, the young quarterback's bigger arm and athleticism has to be enticing to Shanahan.

"And there would be some concerns, I guarantee, with [Lance] for Kyle Shanahan, right now, as well," Cosell said before adding, "I guess it comes down to whether he thinks he can do more things with Lance because of the running element, the designed running element."

You can watch the entire segment with Cosell below.




Follow us on: X, Facebook, Threads, Instagram

Read Original Article
Visit 49ers Webzone

More San Francisco 49ers News