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Kyle Shanahan Won't Commit to a Starting Quarterback

If Lance is healthy, there's a chance he'll start against the Bears, but it's unclear whether his left knee sprain will have healed by then.

Grant Cohn

SANTA CLARA -- The 49ers might bench Jimmy Garoppolo soon.

After his third loss in a row -- an embarassing 30-18 defeat at home to the mediocre Indianapolis Colts -- I asked Shanahan if he will stick with Garoppolo as the starter next week against the Chicago Bears.

"I would guess so," Shanahan said, not sounding too sure about it. "I'm going to watch this tape and see if guys are healthy first of all, I don’t even know where our guys are at. It was good for Jimmy to be able to get healthy enough to play in this game today.”

"You mentioned you would guess Garoppolo would start next week," a reporter followed up. "What is your process going to be over the next few days when you try to make that determination?

"I got a whole team to worry about," Shanahan said. "Not just thinking about what the quarterback situation is right now. I'm going to evaluate everything, see where our team's at, see what gives us the best chance to beat Chicago and see what our options are. That's what you go into each week, finding out your options. We had two quarterbacks who were hurting this week. Jimmy was able to come back and play. We'll see if Trey (Lance) can next week, we're still not sure yet, but I got a lot of things to figure out.”

Translation: If Lance is healthy, there's a chance he'll start against the Bears, but it's unclear whether his left knee sprain will have healed by then. Fair enough. 

Still, the 49ers need to pivot to Lance as soon as he's physical able to play, because he's the future and the 49ers are going nowhere with Garoppolo.

Shanahan will talk to the media this afternoon at 3:30. Stay tuned.

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Grant Cohn
GRANT COHN

Grant Cohn has covered the San Francisco 49ers daily since 2011. He spent the first nine years of his career with the Santa Rosa Press Democrat where he wrote the Inside the 49ers blog and covered famous coaches and athletes such as Jim Harbaugh, Colin Kaepernick and Patrick Willis. In 2012, Inside the 49ers won Sports Blog of the Year from the Peninsula Press Club. In 2020, Cohn joined FanNation and began writing All49ers. In addition, he created a YouTube channel which has become the go-to place on YouTube to consume 49ers content. Cohn's channel typically generates roughly 3.5 million viewers per month, while the 49ers' official YouTube channel generates roughly 1.5 million viewers per month. Cohn live streams almost every day and posts videos hourly during the football season. Cohn is committed to asking the questions that 49ers fans want answered, and providing the most honest and interactive coverage in the country. His loyalty is to the reader and the viewer, not the team or any player or coach. Cohn is a new-age multimedia journalist with an old-school mentality, because his father is Lowell Cohn, the legendary sports columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle from 1979 to 1993. The two have a live podcast every Tuesday. Grant Cohn grew up in Oakland and studied English Literature at UCLA from 2006 to 2010. He currently lives in Oakland with his wife.

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