Trey Lance Tore Two Ankle Ligaments and will Miss Four to Six Months

Lance was running the ball more than 13 times per start before he went down -- more than any quarterback ever.

Grant Cohn | Sep 25, 2022

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San Francisco 49ers

So now we know why the 49ers shut down Trey Lance for the season.

Lance didn't merely break his ankle last Sunday against the Seattle Seahawks. He tore two ligaments in his ankle as well -- the deltoid and the sesamoid, according to the NFL Network's Ian Rapoport, who says Lance's recovery will take four to six months.

Lance injured his ankle running for two yards between the tackles on second and 8 in the first quarter. It was his third run between the tackles of the game already, which means an injury to Lance seemed inevitable. Of course, no one expected he would suffer such a serious injury.

Lance was running the ball more than 13 times per start before he went down -- more than any quarterback ever. More than Tim Tebow, who was a terrible passer. The 49ers clearly felt Lance wasn't developed enough as a passer yet, so he had to run. Which means last year when Lance was supposed to be developing on the scout team was a waste, because he didn't develop.

Now he won't get to develop this year, either. So the 49ers will have wasted the first two seasons of his career. And he still is extremely raw and inexperienced. Will they make him the starting quarterback next season? If so, will they run him repeatedly between the tackles? Or did the Trey Lance project fall apart before it even got started?

I'll guess we'll find out eventually. The 49ers have some big decisions to make.

Published Sep 25, 2022

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.