After watching the former 49ers quarterback light things up in the Los Angeles Chargers’ win over the Detroit Lions, revisionist history seems to be showing up.
Trey Lance went 13-for-20 with 120 yards and two touchdowns Thursday night in the Hall of Fame Game — a 34–7 win for the Los Angeles Chargers over the Detroit Lions.
Preseason. Week 1. Against a bunch of Lions backups. Just so we’re clear.
And as you might anticipate, we can now second-guess Trey Lance and the San Francisco 49ers’ decision to move on. So we can reset this argument: Lance wasn’t bad. The 49ers didn’t handle development wrong. It was a situation that quite simply didn’t work out.
Here are the facts: the 49ers made a bad pick in 2021. Three firsts and a third for Trey Lance — or possibly Mac Jones, depending on which draft room story you believe — and neither is a starter today. This problem usually gets a coach and GM fired, but the 49ers managed to weather it.
In his rookie season, Lance broke his finger. Injury aside, what few glimpses we saw of the then-future were promising at best, and disappointing at worst. He threw ducks filling in for Jimmy Garoppolo against the Seattle Seahawks, got smoked by the Arizona Cardinals, then finally looked competent against the Houston Texans.
Promising, sure — but mostly because it came against a bad defense.
The injury certainly derailed a lot of his development. Hey, it happens. Let’s go to 2022. This was when the 49ers were set to have Lance be the starter. Then, two weeks into the season, Lance broke his ankle: another injury, another derailment to the development of a player who hasn’t played much football.
That’s two straight years of Trey Lance’s development derailed by injury. As you know, 2022 had the emergence of Brock Purdy, and the 49ers went to the NFC Championship. In 2023, Brock Purdy was the starter — and an MVP candidate for a solid stretch—while Lance failed to beat Sam Darnold for the backup job. He was traded to the Dallas Cowboys, and we thought that chapter was over. Purdy took the 49ers to a Super Bowl that year and played very well.
For those of you screaming Purdy is a system quarterback, let me know how Lance did in that system on limited viewing. He had the same weapons.
But revisionist history is excellent, and we want to talk about how the 49ers screwed all of this up. So, where exactly did the 49ers botch Trey Lance’s development? Is it the running plays? Well, if I remember right, Purdy did a lot of that, and we didn’t see anything to the level of a broken ankle.
Was it the reps? Well, he couldn’t get reps because he was injured. If you can’t make it to work for a week, it’s understandable, but if you keep not showing up, your employer is eventually going to need to look elsewhere, whether it’s your fault or not.
The only thing botched in this mess was the 49ers’ decision to give up draft picks to take a quarterback in the first place.
Logical, yes. It just didn’t work out. Trey Lance’s situation was unfortunate. The 49ers had someone in Purdy playing very, very well, and were not getting returns on their investment. If you want the 49ers to stick Trey Lance in those last few seasons stubbornly, then don’t get mad if he’s not playing up to expectations, or if he gets injured and can’t play at all.
What I’m getting at here is A: if the 49ers stuck to Trey Lance, it’s doubtful there would be a Super Bowl appearance in 2023-2024 (tell me, with a straight face, that Trey Lance brings the 49ers back against the Detroit Lions in that NFC Championship).
Now, let’s return to Thursday night. If you’re going to get mad at the 49ers for moving off of Trey Lance, don’t forget to get on the Dallas Cowboys also; they didn’t exactly jump to re-sign him at the end of 2024. Also, you saw Trey Lance against NFL starters. You saw him in the preseason, too. And when he was with the 49ers in the preseason, he didn’t look awful. Not as good as Thursday Night, but still had moments.
But it was preseason. There was no game plan against him. There wasn’t any game plan for him.
So, the current argument is that the numbers Lance put up against Lions backups in the first week of preseason as well as the highlights displayed, when there’s already a whole book of injuries and tape on how he looked against starting NFL defenses, AND there was a quarterback on the 49ers’ roster who was better as well as cheaper, and somehow ignore the fact that said quarterback took the 49ers to two NFC Championships and a Super Bowl.
Whatever.
Trey Lance didn’t work out. It was unfortunate and disappointing. The 49ers had a better quarterback in Brock Purdy. And the performance in Week 1 of the NFL preseason by Lance isn’t enough to erase three years of his career history or lack thereof.
Trey Lance might still become something. But let’s not pretend the 49ers blew it by choosing the guy who actually delivered playoff wins.