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Should the 49ers Have Drafted Justin Fields Instead of Trey Lance?

Fields certainly is more athletic than Lance, but Lance has the potential to be the better quarterback -- he just needs to play.

Grant Cohn

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The 49ers didn't play this past Sunday, and yet Trey Lance trended all day on Twitter, and not because of anything he did -- he has a broken ankle. He trended because Justin Fields played extremely well, and fans wanted to know:

Did the 49ers draft the wrong quarterback?

Fields rushed for 178 yards and a touchdown on Sunday, plus he threw three touchdown passes. He's a big-time playmaker and one of the best athletes in the NFL, and he's improving as a passer. Meanwhile, Lance has been completely unable to improve this season, because he's injured.

So did the 49ers draft the wrong quarterback?

Fields certainly is more athletic than Lance, but Lance has the potential to be the better quarterback -- he just needs to play.

Lance is merely 22-years old -- he's one year younger than Fields. And Lance has started just four games and thrown just 102 passes so far in his career. And his passer rating is a respectable 84.5.

Now let's look at Fields. He threw 115 passes in his first five starts, and his passer rating was 70.5. Technically, Lance had a better start to his career than Fields did. Fields struggled majorly his rookie year -- not many analysts or fans praised him, even though he was young and his athleticism stood out immediately. Since then, Fields has improved drastically, although he still has lots of room for improvement -- he's still inaccurate and takes lots of unnecessary sacks. But by next season, he could be elite. Most good quarterbacks take a few seasons to reach their full potential. Josh Allen, Jalen Hurts and Tua Tagovailoa each took three years.

Why would Lance be any different? If he's special, he should be special by his third season. 

Unfortunately for the 49ers, they already wasted two years of his career. Last season, he mostly sat on the bench. And this season, he mostly sits in a luxury suite. So will next season be Year 3 or Year 1 of his career?

The 49ers made the right choice when they drafted Lance or Fields, they simply botched Lance's development. We'll see if they can fix their mess.

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.

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