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49ers Veterans Explain How Trey Lance Has Improved Since His Rookie Season

"He has gotten better from where he was at the end of last year."

Grant Cohn

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SANTA CLARA -- Trey Lance drew rave reviews during the first week of 49ers OTAs. Here's what veterans George Kittle and Jimmie Ward said about his growth.

ME: Do you see the difference between Year 2 Trey and Year 1 Trey?

KITTLE: "Yeah. I would say so. Even if it's just from his routine every day to how he holds himself, his confidence is a lot higher, too. As an NFL player, you have to have confidence to be able to do anything. If you lack confidence, that's when you drop a football, everything snowballs, you throw an interception and next thing you know it's an incomplete pass, you mess up a play call. And Trey has done a good job where if he doesn't like a pass, the next one he's still going to come out firing. You have to appreciate that. But I do think he has gotten better from where he was at the end of last year."

J. WARD: "He's more comfortable. Coming into OTAs getting to start Day 1, obviously he's still going to make mistakes. I'm nine years in the league and I'm still making mistakes. It's just about experience with him. The more plays he gets, the more defenses he gets to go against -- and we're one of the best defenses in the league. We have to prove that again, but previously we were one of the best defenses the past few years. We're going to make him better. And he's also going to make us better."

Watch both interviews below:

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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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