49ers' Kyle Shanahan Comments on Trey Lance Before Chargers Game

Not too long ago, the San Francisco 49ers were hoping that a hotshot prospect out of a small school named Trey Lance would be their quarterback of the future. A year after they blew a fourth-quarter lead in Super Bowl LIV, they traded three first-round draft picks and a third-rounder to the Miami Dolphins for the No. 3 pick in the 2021 draft, which they used on Lance.

He had played at North Dakota State, a school that competes in the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) of the NCAA's Division I. He led the school to a national championship as a sophomore, and the 49ers saw enough in him to make him the heir apparent to Jimmy Garoppolo, who was proving he was nothing more than a game manager.

But Lance didn't pan out, while Brock Purdy, the last player chosen in the 2022 draft, came out of nowhere and snatched the QB1 spot after Lance and Garoppolo suffered season-ending injuries in 2022. He's now fighting for the QB2 spot on the Los Angeles Chargers, the team that will visit San Francisco on Saturday for a preseason game.

San Francisco coach Kyle Shanahan was asked about Lance and what he took away from the experience of trying to develop the signal-caller.

"I take everything away from every situation," Shanahan said. "I don't want to sit here and evaluate Trey too much. I think I've done that before. But when I revisit that, we knew where our team was at, and we knew where it was going to be the next couple of years, and we were committed to getting a rookie quarterback.

"We weren't sure that it would be forever, but we thought that was important to-contractually, with where our team was at-keep a good team together. So, we knew we were going for a rookie, especially after a veteran left earlier that year, that was an option. So, that was more of a plan in that way.

"... I'm pulling for Trey, I love Trey. One of the best people I've been around and I really hope it works out for him."

Lance has looked good at times in the Chargers' three preseason games so far, even though he wasn't very accurate with his passing in their last two contests. But in their first game of the exhibition schedule on July 31, he completed 13 of his 20 pass attempts and connected on two touchdown passes as L.A. clobbered the Detroit Lions, 34-7.

In two seasons with the Niners, he appeared in a total of eight regular-season games and completed 54.9% of his pass attempts while totaling 797 passing yards, five passing touchdowns and three interceptions. He has flashed some dual-threat ability, but he hasn't even come close to putting it all together.

He may need to earn a starting job somewhere else if he is to have a real opportunity to become whatever he can become at this point.

Everyone now agrees that the Niners erred in trading for Lance, especially since one of the picks they gave up for him turned out to be used on Micah Parsons, the star pass rusher who has combined for 52.5 sacks in his first four seasons. Then again, no one could've seen Purdy coming as a huge diamond in the rough just when the team badly needed one under center.