The Trey Lance Saga Is a Soccer Bummer

Let’s rewind the clock. It’s December 7, 2020, and Kyle Shanahan’s San Francisco 49ers are getting smacked round by Josh Allen and the Payments. Buddy, they’re getting smacked round actual good. You recognize these video games when Allen looks like a bulldozer with a laser beam and a everlasting Mario tremendous star? This was a type of nights.

This version of Allen (or Patrick Mahomes or Jalen Hurts or Justin Herbert or Lamar Jackson, because the evening could have it) is the worst opponent to have. There’s nothing to do. You simply kinda sit there and take it, praying for a drop, a fumble, a penalty, something that may create a cease on your in any other case powerless protection.

After sitting there and taking it to the tune of 34 factors, Shanahan was requested about how he evaluates quarterbacks—whether or not it had modified at throughout latest seasons as a head coach. He gave an essential quote.

“How I consider every part is all the time altering. … You begin to see you may win soccer video games with any kind of quarterback so long as they’re adequate and you may be adequate in lots of of various methods. So I consider quarterbacks when it comes to looking for individuals who can have an opportunity to be a type of elite-type guys, and there’s a lot of alternative ways to do it. … You’re simply looking for a man who is healthier than about 98 % of the folks on this planet or on this nation, and if you discover that, you get him and also you alter to him.”

The thought of simply looking for the man is just not an unfamiliar one for Shanahan. Flip again the clock one other couple of years, and Shanahan’s fielding an offseason query concerning the zone learn—significantly, whether or not defenses have found out cope with it.

“No, there isn’t something to determine. [The zone read] is a really sound scheme. It’s how do you need to assault it? What do you need to do off it once they 100% decide to cease it? … Is your quarterback adequate at working with the soccer to make them decide to cease it? And as soon as they do, is he adequate to make the passes that he has to that they only opened up? And if he’s, that’s an enormous difficulty. It’s robust to seek out that man. And should you don’t defend him proper, should you don’t do the appropriate stuff, it’s robust to remain wholesome.”

Once more: discovering that man. Since no less than 2018, however in all probability longer, there’s been a man in Shanahan’s head. A man who can run the soccer nicely sufficient to include the zone learn into the offense and play some 11-on-11 soccer, however who can cross it nicely sufficient to execute Shanahan’s West Coast play-action passing sport. Not a simple man to seek out—as Shanahan mentioned himself.

Properly, everyone knows when Shanahan thought he had discovered the man. It was in 2021, when the 49ers traded up for Trey Lance.

Now, I’ll skip to the top of the story, for the one individual studying who doesn’t understand it: It went terribly. Not simply unhealthy, however actually unhealthy. I imply, one-of-the-worst-trades-in-modern-NFL-history unhealthy.

The 49ers ended up buying and selling the twelfth, twenty ninth, twenty ninth, and 102nd total picks in three separate drafts for the third total choice that they used on Lance. As Bill Barnwell summarized for ESPN, that alone is an enormous overpay. Then you definitely begin placing names to the picks. The Dolphins, who traded with the Niners out of that third total choose, packaged their haul of picks into varied offers: the commerce up for Jaylen Waddle, the trades for Tyreek Hill and Bradley Chubb. The Eagles then owned that twelfth total choose and traded up as nicely, for DeVonta Smith. The Cowboys ended up with the twelfth total choose and spent it on Micah Parsons. Each single crew concerned within the Niners’ line of commerce dominoes acquired hilariously good gamers—save for the Niners themselves.

Lance did nearly nothing to assist the 49ers win video games throughout his two years with the crew. He appeared in eight video games, first as a sneaky gadget backup to Jimmy Garoppolo, then as a spot starter following a Garoppolo harm, after which because the preordained starter to start the 2022 season. However simply three snaps into Week 2 final season, Lance broke his ankle. That might finish his 49ers profession—2-2 as a starter and 102 passes and 54 carries to his identify. Final week, San Francisco lower its losses with Lance, buying and selling him to Dallas for a single fourth-round choose.

There are such a lot of the reason why Lance didn’t work out for the Niners, and the primary amongst these is harm luck. On prime of the season-ending harm in 2022, Lance broke a finger on his throwing hand through the preseason of his rookie 12 months and sprained his knee through the season. However there’s actually nothing to be discovered from unhealthy harm luck (until you subscribe to the speculation that Shanahan is a doomed coach, ceaselessly cursed to get near a Tremendous Bowl championship he can by no means possess, which, I’m kinda there with you).

It accordingly turns into troublesome to speak about Lance’s developmental arc and the errors made alongside the best way. The 49ers selected to sit down Lance for his total rookie season, believing his improvement could be higher served on the bench than on the sector. And Lance wanted improvement. He was a uniquely inexperienced prospect. A one-year faculty starter who performed only one sport in 2020 as a result of COVID-19 pandemic, Lance had 318 profession passes in faculty, all on the FCS stage.

With hindsight clearing our imaginative and prescient, it appears apparent that Lance ought to have gotten live-game motion earlier in his profession with the 49ers, even on the expense of short-term crew success. However Lance’s finger harm, which affected him for the entire 2021 season, probably made the concept of beginning him even shakier than his rawness did. The Niners had been painted into a tricky nook.

However the obvious cause Lance by no means realized his potential with San Francisco is the one which Shanahan has been telling us for the reason that starting. It’s actually exhausting to seek out the man, and even should you discover him, it may be robust to maintain him wholesome. Had the 49ers handed on Lance in favor of the NFL draft intelligentsia’s favored quarterback prospect on the time, Justin Fields, the Niners is likely to be nearer to having the man—however whether or not or not Fields is the man stays undetermined. If that they had traded as much as the second total choose, in place to take Zach Wilson, an enormous riser within the predraft course of who obtained comparisons to Patrick Mahomes and Aaron Rodgers? Yeah, in all probability nonetheless not the man. It’s just so, so exhausting to draft a quarterback, develop him into an impactful starter, and hold him there.

There may be one other different quarterback the 49ers may have chosen: Mac Jones, the Alabama prospect who many insiders believed was San Francisco’s preliminary goal following the commerce up. Jones, who had a strong rookie season earlier than 12 months 2 play caller shenanigans took some wind out of his sails, seems to be to be a practical NFL quarterback—one thing Lance has solely flashed within the transient moments we’ve seen him play. Shouldn’t the Niners have taken Jones?

I imply, certain. The 49ers take Mac, he replaces Garoppolo, they usually hold trucking alongside. They run an offense that minimizes what it asks some extent guard quarterback to do. It asks him to be correct, threat averse, and obedient. They win video games on the power of Deebo Samuel, Brandon Aiyuk, George Kittle, and now Christian McCaffrey. It’s the identical method that drove the 49ers to 3 NFC championship video games in 4 years, and accordingly, it’s a fully defensible technique.

However Shanahan can get that manufacturing out of anybody. That’s the purpose. That’s why he acquired the job as the top coach of the Niners, why his offense has been the defining offense of the final 5 years of soccer. As a result of with it, you may take a second-round choose like Garoppolo or a fourth-round choose like Kirk Cousins, and you may produce an offense that may in any other case require a first-round choose at quarterback. To spend a first-round choose on a quarterback to run this offense could be wasteful. To spend three first-rounders? It will erase the entire benefit the offense gives.

That’s the factor about Shanahan’s system: It’s a ground raiser. It takes quarterbacks who would in any other case be positive however unspectacular and creates unimaginable offense with them. That’s why we name it QB pleasant. Lance represented not only a change within the system—he represented a breaking away from it. Shanahan had spent all that draft capital as a result of Lance was supposed to lift the ceiling of the offense, not the ground. The identical logic was on the coronary heart of the choice Rams head coach Sean McVay made to commerce Jared Goff for Matthew Stafford (a quarterback Shanahan was additionally hotly pursuing).

Take into account the offense that Shanahan ran with Lance in that transient flash of the quarterback’s profession, in Week 1 of the 2022 season. It was a shotgun-heavy, option-heavy assault—nothing just like the under-center play-action cross sport that had lengthy typified the Shanahan strategy.

The number of seems to be within the working sport, all the time a feather in Shanahan’s cap, exploded due to the extra menace Lance supplied together with his legs. Wrenching open holes for explosive runs had by no means been simpler.

And Shanahan may nonetheless, at any time, return and press a type of acquainted buttons within the passing sport to create straightforward throws for his younger quarterback.

This was the way it was alleged to work, and it actually sucks that we by no means acquired to see a lot of it. An enormous and explosive quarterback with an enormous arm taking part in 11-on-11 soccer with all of Shanahan’s machinations and San Francisco’s playmakers at his disposal. It will have been a wonderful factor.

We gained’t ever see it once more—no less than, not with Lance. However I’d argue that Shanahan’s seek for the man—the dude who gained’t simply execute his offense, however change it totally—continues to be underway.

Take into account the 12 months that Brock Purdy had. At first blush, Purdy seems to be like an iteration of Jones or Garoppolo—not an enormous man, not an enormous arm. It’s straightforward to imagine that Purdy acquired plugged into the identical offense, benefited from the identical cheat codes, suffered the identical limitations. That didn’t occur.

Purdy is a scrambler and a gamer and is much extra aggressive than Garoppolo has been over his profession. Over 12 % of Purdy’s cross makes an attempt went greater than 20 yards downfield final season; in his six years because the San Francisco starter, Garoppolo averaged 8.6 %. Equally, Purdy is a profitable quarterback late within the down, both as a scrambler or on a designed boot. When Purdy holds the soccer for greater than 2.5 seconds (a great benchmark for a play that’s transitioning from the fast sport into one thing extra), he has constructive anticipated factors added per play of .15—over Garoppolo’s profession, he has a web damaging (-.03).

Purdy doesn’t symbolize the tectonic shift that Lance did, however he does deliver a brand new taste of mobility to what had beforehand been an inert quarterback room in Shanahan’s 49ers historical past: Brian Hoyer, Garoppolo, Nick Mullens, C.J. Beathard. Maybe Purdy’s pocket administration and escapability can be sufficient to vault this offense ahead, push the ceiling to Tremendous Bowl ranges. Or maybe it gained’t be the mobility, however the distinctive arm expertise of Sam Darnold, the brand new QB2 who ousted Lance. Pocket passers with high-end arm expertise have discovered profession resurgences on this offense (Ryan Tannehill, Stafford), and Darnold has remarkably extra arm expertise than any quarterback who has performed in San Francisco throughout Shanahan’s tenure, together with Purdy. Save, maybe, for Lance.

Both approach, whereas the gamble on Lance failed, the speculation behind it’s neither disproven nor deserted. Shanahan’s offense should proceed to evolve. And, because it does, new calls for can be positioned on its quarterback. The outdated prototype will fall away. Lance is likely to be executed as a 49er, however Shanahan’s experiment on the quarterback place is much from over.