All 49ers

Honest Assessment of Trey Lance's First Practice with the 49ers

They got the result they scripted.

Grant Cohn

In one sense, Trey Lance's first practice with the 49ers was a charade.

It wasn't even a real practice -- the 49ers had merely 22 players. So they couldn't do 11-on-11 team drills, which means they were limited to seven-on-sevens. 

And of course the 49ers wanted Lance to perform well, wanted the media to write how good he played. So the 49ers called 24 short passes, and Lance completed 20 of them.

They got the result they scripted.

But Lance still had to look the part of a starting quarterback. Still had to hear the plays, understand the plays, call the plays, throw the passes and complete them. And he did all that well, like a five-year veteran. He never fumbled the snap, as Colin Kaepernick did repeatedly when he was a 23-year-old rookie in training camp. Lance never threw an interception, either. And he checked down frequently.

When was the last time you saw Jimmy Garoppolo check down?

Lance profiles as a safety-first game manager from the pocket who just happens to have a cannon for an arm and the ability to run 21 miles per hour, which makes him one of the fastest players in the NFL already. So he's pretty much the opposite of Garoppolo, and has tremendous big-play potential, which he didn't have an opportunity to display on Friday. Kyle Shanahan asked Lance to execute the basic Garopppolo offense -- lots of short passes from the pocket. No rollouts or long throws. 

And Lance showed he can execute that offense. Now it's time for the 49ers to put more on his plate.

What a first impression for the young quarterback.

Check out this video I shot of Lance warming up:

Published
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.

Home/News