For most of the entire second half of the season, the 49ers were bound and determined to keep Trey Lance as hidden as possible. They pretty much only played him when absolutely necessary, and they wouldn’t let him speak to the media at all if he wasn’t starting.
However, despite the secrecy, word of Lance’s progress did get out during the year, and whispers have continued even into this offseason. The question is, how much stock can we put in anything we’re hearing?
In December, Fred Warner casually mentioned that Trey Lance was dicing up the 49ers' defense in practice. Matt Maiocco said something similar later that month. In January, Jimmie Ward said Lance was doing too well as the scout team quarterback.
Now two more voices have entered the chat, thanks to the 49ers Talk podcast. Fox Sports’ Jay Glazer said, “I’ve heard great stuff about him behind the scenes. I heard they love him. They’re enamored with him. He does some things in practice that make you go, ‘Oh, my goodness.’
Peter King also joined the podcast and added to the praise. “My feeling is — and I feel strong about this — my feeling is: Kyle Shanahan knows right now that he has a good quarterback... I will be surprised if Trey Lance in 2022 isn’t as good or better than Jimmy Garoppolo was in 2021. Having said that, I think Garoppolo was better than he will ultimately get credit for.”
All of that sounds great, of course, but how much of it can we really believe? Certainly, any players from the 49ers aren’t going to publicly trash the guy who is supposed to be the future of the franchise.
Peter King certainly has a good relationship with the current 49ers regime — he was embedded in the draft room a few years ago. Teams are not going to give that kind of access to just anyone.
Jay Glazer is a football groundhog. We don’t hear from him for almost the entire year, and then all of a sudden he’ll pop out of nowhere and break one or two huge stories before retreating back into the abyss for the long winter. His words carry a lot of weight with me. That isn’t to say that Peter King’s doesn’t, but the scarcity of Glazer’s reports resonates with me for some reason.
While opinions about Jimmy Garoppolo are all over the place, the growing consensus on Lance from both inside and outside the 49ers organization is that he looks the part of a third overall draft pick. It will be interesting to see if any of that changes are we progress through the offseason.
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