49ers show patience letting Lance develop, but how long can they let Garoppolo lead?
The 49ers aren’t rushing things with Trey Lance. At least not yet.
Lance, a first-round draft pick who signed a four-year contract Wednesday morning, entered the start of 49ers training camp this week as the clear backup behind incumbent starting quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo.
Head coach Kyle Shanahan made that much clear when he spoke to the media Tuesday as players reported to Santa Clara ahead of Wednesday’s start of training camp. His message was simple: Garoppolo’s the starter until proven otherwise.
“There’s no open competition right now,” Shanahan said, “in terms of their getting equal reps with the same group. Jimmy’s coming in as the one and Trey’s coming in as the two.”
Fair enough. Garoppolo’s been operating within Shanahan’s offense since being acquired from the Patriots in 2017. Lance hasn’t had a fully padded NFL practice since getting drafted third overall out of North Dakota State in April. And that was after only getting one game with the Bison in 2020 due to the pandemic.
“(Garoppolo’s) our best quarterback in the building right now,” Shanahan said. “We’re going to give Trey the first chance, obviously, as the backup, and any time a guy’s playing a lot better than the guy in front of him is when you start to split reps up with that team and start to talk about it. Trey’s had seven practices with us and (we) haven’t seen him in 40 days (since the offseason program).”
Lance in all likelihood will be the 49ers’ starter at some point. But Shanahan on Tuesday was confident and comfortable announcing that Garoppolo will enter training camp as the starter despite San Francisco mortgaging it’s future draft capital (first-round picks in the next two drafts, plus a third-round pick next spring to Miami) to move up nine spots to take Lance this spring.
Lance still has much to prove
There’s a clear subtext here. For Lance to get the starting job he must make obvious to all he’s a better player than Garoppolo over the next month. Maybe he’ll get there, but he hasn’t proven anything yet.
That’s an impossible task during un-padded, noncompetitive practices during rookie minicamp in May and offseason team activities in June, where Lance’s team drills were without offensive and defensive linemen altogether. He’s never faced an NFL pass rush or made made a read against 11 NFL defenders on the field. There would be little point to Shanahan setting a higher bar for Lance before his first training camp practice when it’s clear, for now, there’s no urgency to replace Garoppolo, which could change if Garoppolo suffered another injury.
Garoppolo impressed Shanahan during OTAs and may have a different mental edge now that he has real competition for his job for the first time since coming to San Francisco.
“He looked like he had a little bit of a fire in him, I think,” star tight end George Kittle said. “He’s always had that but it was just a little bit more intense, and I really appreciate that of him. I’m fully expecting Jimmy to come out of the gates firing this camp.”
Shanahan said of Garoppolo: “He came to OTAs after his time away and I thought he improved. ... Just how sharp he was. The rhythm of getting the ball out on time, where it was going. Just even if I didn’t watch the film, if I just watched his body language and how he talked about the play. He was very clear. He was very sharp, impressive in what he did and it was good to see.”
Shanahan doesn’t have to thrust Lance into the lineup. That’s the benefit of having a team many expect to contend for playoff spot, as it did as the No. 1 seed in 2019 en route to the Super Bowl. If healthy — a sizable “if” after the disastrous 2020 season — they believe they’re good enough to be in the championship mix. Which means riding with Garoppolo until Lance forces Shanahan’s hand, or Garoppolo forces it for him by suffering another injury.
Put another way, the 49ers aren’t the Jaguars or Jets, who are rebuilding with new head coaches and quarterbacks taken with the top two picks in the draft in Trevor Lawrence and Zach Wilson, respectively. Those guys will start right away because those teams don’t have better options to help win games.
Super Bowl is the goal
Shanahan’s team is in a unique place in a league of haves and have-nots. Teams either have quarterbacks capable of winning a championship or they’re in the search for one. The 49ers’ Venn diagram includes both. They believe they can win a Super Bowl with Garoppolo, as they almost did in 2019, while also having a quarterback they can build around in Lance beyond 2021.
“It doesn’t really change anything. The goal’s to win the Super Bowl,” Kittle said.
Shanahan added: “Our team know that we got a good team, that’s why I don’t have to sit here and convince them of it.”
It’s pretty clear Shanahan wanted to make the move for Lance because of Garoppolo’s longstanding injury concerns paired with Lance’s sky-high ceiling.
Team captain Trent Williams, the left tackle who signed a land-mark six-year, $138.06 million contract in the spring, has a more simplified outlook.
“I don’t look at it as a quarterback situation,” he said. “I look at it as if you are up toward that first round and you don’t have any glaring needs, why wouldn’t you add one of the best players in the draft if you can do so? So, I think it makes the whole team better. Trey is an outstanding talent. I think he’s going to take the league by storm when he’s ready and so we’re in a win-win situation. As long as Jimmy is out there, we know what he can do and then if the time comes and it’s Trey’s turn, I think we all kind of expect him to do a certain job and I think he is very capable of doing so.”
There’s another dynamic to the Garoppolo and Lance situation that could be meaningful if Garoppolo maintains the starting job into the regular season. Lance could be used in certain situations to throw a curve ball at defenses given how good he is as a runner.
It could be similar to what 49ers fans saw when Colin Kaepernick was used in special packages before overtaking Alex Smith for the starting job in 2012. Kaepernick’s legs were used in goal line situations, forcing defenses to adjust to formations and personnel groupings they had never studied on film.
There’s little doubt Shanahan and first-year offensive coordinator Mike McDaniel, who had been a run-game specialist before his promotion this offseason, already have plays in mind in which they could unleash Lance’s legs. But they want to see how Lance adjusts to the normal version of the offense before implementing those plays.
“You want to use anyone who could help in situations,” Shanahan said. “When you do have a quarterback who has the threat to run and who can make throws, that’s something I would love to use, but that’s something that will be based off of whether he’s ready, how it looks that week based off the scheme’s we’re going against and how he fits in our offense overall based off what we’ve seen in practice.”
Developing Lance
There’s a balancing act in developing Lance within the traditional offense while also mixing in wrinkles that can’t be run with Garoppolo, the more stationary pocket quarterback. Shanahan made it sound as though the installation for those quarterback running plays won’t take up much time during training camp. The focus will be Lance developing as a passer from the pocket.
“When you put a quarterback run in, it’s more based off an element that the defense isn’t accounting for him,” Shanahan said. “So you just run it until they account for him and then you go to other stuff, and you just take what they give you. You just watch his college tape and he’s gotten plenty of runs, so you don’t need to go out there and run him in practice.
“But you do need to make sure your line and running backs know how to do it. And that usually ties into (the other runs) you do. Maybe the quarterback keeps it, or maybe there are some runs where maybe the quarterback does it this week where the running back did it last week. But the O-line doesn’t know the difference. So as long as you’re developing a system that’s interchangeable with who’s in there, you’re never going to put a guy in who isn’t ready for it.”
The eventual competition between Garoppolo and Lance is one of the more fascinating position battles in recent memory. The starting line is this week’s open to training camp.
It’s a situation with a wide range of possible outcomes. Maybe Garoppolo is a different player, as Kittle and Shanahan hinted at after observing him during OTAs. Or perhaps Lance proves to be the superior player over the next four weeks and overtakes Garoppolo, making him and his $26.4 million cap number expendable, or force him to take a pay cut as a backup.
No matter the wide-ranging possibilities, Shanahan sounded optimistic about Garoppolo based on his work during the spring after the 49ers made their move to land his eventual replacement.
“That’s why when we made this trade,” said Shanahan, “I told Jimmy, ‘I know this is discouraging and it must be frustrating for you.’ But you also got to know Jimmy’s a very good player and if Jimmy’s at the top of his game, I told him, ‘there’s no rookie that’s going to come in here right away and be able to take your job if you’re on the top of your game.’ And what I’ve seen so far is him getting there and that’s very exciting for me, very exciting for the Niners. It’s early. That’s OTAs. We’ll see how training camp goes.”
This story was originally published July 28, 2021 at 7:24 AM.
