49ers CEO Jed York comfortable allowing Trey Lance to sit for two years
The San Francisco 49ers have themselves a nice little problem at the quarterback position after selecting Trey Lance No. 3 overall in last week’s 2021 NFL Draft.
Incumbent starter Jimmy Garoppolo remains under contract for the next two seasons and could very well be under center Week 1. As for the 20-year-old Lance, he has not thrown a pass in a regular-season game since 2019 — the 2020 FCS campaign was postponed to the spring, but he decided to opt out in order to prepare for the draft.
As for Lance’s ability to start immediately, 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan seems to think that he could be ready if the circumstances warranted such a drastic move. A mere 15 months from leading San Francisco to a Super Bowl appearance, Garoppolo has been subjected to trade rumors on a near-never-ending loop.
Now that the Chicago Bears (Justin Fields) and New England Patriots (Mac Jones) selected a quarterback in the first round of the 2021 NFL Draft, the trade market for Garoppolo just isn’t there. What does this all mean for the San Francisco 49ers? CEO Jed York had some rather interesting comments recently, as he told Matt Maiocco of NBC Sports Bay Area:
“We’ve talked about this internally. If we’re in a situation where Jimmy goes out and takes us to a Super Bowl again and has an MVP-caliber season, and does it again, there are worse dilemmas to be in. And Jimmy certainly has the ability to do that.”
There’s an obvious caveat here. Garoppolo has never been a top-10 quarterback in the NFL, let alone an MVP candidate. The 29-year-old signal-caller has also missed a combined 23 of a possible 48 regular-season games over the past three campaigns — leading to San Francisco trading up from the 12th pick to No. 3 overall for Lance.
However, he did complete 69% of his passes for nearly 4,000 yards with 27 touchdowns against 13 interceptions in 2019 en route to leading the 49ers to a 13-3 record and the NFC title.
