The entrance of Trey Lance and the exit of Jimmy Garoppolo was supposed to answer all the 49ers’ quarterback questions. Instead the question marks around the position remain perhaps larger than ever.
What remains uncertain is the answer to who starts Week 1 of the 2023 season. Brock Purdy’s recovery from offseason UCL surgery will play a role in who starts the season opener. A camp battle between Lance and Darnold will also factor in. One thing that is certain is that while the rumors will fly on a possible Lance trade, the 49ers are in no position to deal the former No. 3 pick.
Let’s put aside for a moment the order the quarterbacks go on the depth chart. It doesn’t really matter in the scope of the Lance trade discussion in late March. Whether he’s QB1 or QB3, trading him isn’t a move San Francisco should really be considering.
First, quarterback depth is an advantage for an NFL team. That’s especially true when the entire QB room costs the team less than $15 million against the cap. In the absence of a star signal caller, a trio of at least capable players will do on a roster built to make life easy on the QB.
There’s also the issue of compensation. Even if the 49ers wanted to deal Lance, it’s hard to imagine his value would be exceedingly high. Even a third-round pick wouldn’t be worth putting a dent in a spot where the team has built depth.
These two alone is reason enough to remove a Lance trade from consideration, but then we have to factor in where head coach Kyle Shanahan and general manager John Lynch are coming from.
San Francisco is coming off a season where they saw Lance, their starter, go down in a Week 2 win over Seattle. Then their backup, Garoppolo, went down in a Week 13 win over Miami. Purdy then got hurt in the NFC championship game.
The 2022 season marked the fifth time in six seasons Shanahan had to go to more than one starting quarterback, and the fourth time he’d needed to use three or more. In 2017 the moves were at least in part performance-based, but all the other years there were injuries at the position that forced multiple QBs into the lineup.
This isn’t a team that can confidently operate as “normal” at the most important position. They’re not in a place where there’s a starter and a decent backup while the third QB is an afterthought. It’s a Super Bowl-caliber roster that can’t see another season lost because they don’t have enough depth at quarterback.
That’s why Lance is important. Even if Purdy is the “leader in the clubhouse” to be the starter after earning it in seven starts last year, it’s far from a certainty that Mr. Irrelevant from last year’s draft will continue on the trajectory he set in his first stint as a starter. He’s also coming off a major elbow injury that may or may not impact his play.
Moving Lance leaves Purdy and Sam Darnold as the only QBs on the roster. While it’s not a sure thing Purdy comes back and performs at a high level, it’s even less of a sure thing that Darnold will suddenly figure it out with the 49ers to become a QB that completes 65 percent of his throws and doesn’t turn the ball over.
A Lance trade means the 49ers are ready to bet big on Purdy, Darnold, who they signed on a one-year deal worth $3.5 million guaranteed, and perhaps another rookie they take late in the draft.
That’s a risky proposition for a team that’s seen so many seasons derailed by injuries at that position.
Then, of course, there’s the underlying risk with all of this where Lance figures it out with his next team and the 49ers traded a franchise QB because they wanted to bet on Purdy after seven starts and Darnold after … existing. It’s not off the table that Lance becomes a very good player once he gets an opportunity to start a full slate of games and gain the experience he so sorely lacks. That’s less important than the immediate though for the 49ers where Lance is, at worst, something the 49ers have needed more years than not under Shanahan – a talented backup capable of winning games.
Things do change rapidly in the NFL, and by training camp the 49ers may have a rookie they really like and a desperate team is ready to part with premium draft capital for Lance. At that point the risk-reward of dealing him would need to be recalibrated, but for now there just aren’t a lot of scenarios where such a trade makes much sense.