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The Most Important Question About Trey Lance

No one seems to be asking it.

Grant Cohn

In this story:

Trey Lance is the No. 1 topic of discussion in the NFL right now, and no one knows exactly what to expect from him, so people keep asking negative hypotheticals, mostly for attention.

What if Lance falls on his face?

What if the 49ers just can't win with Lance?

What if Lance loses Week 1 to the Bears?

How short of leash will Lance have?

When will the 49ers bench Lance and turn back to Jimmy Garoppolo?

None of these outcomes seem particularly likely, and they all assume that Lance could be a flat-out bust, as if we didn't see him start two games last season and post a quarterback rating of 97.3 as a 21-year-old rookie. As if a few weeks a go in the preseason we didn't just see him post a quarterback rating of 116.9. I'm not saying Lance is the next Steve Young, but if he were the next Jim Druckenmiller, I think we'd know by now.

Here's a more relevant question about Lance: What if he's just a little bit better than Garoppolo right now?

That's a low bar -- Garoppolo isn't exactly elite. And still the 49ers won nearly 70 percent of their games with him on the field. They almost won the Super Bowl with him -- had a 10-point lead in the fourth quarter against the Chiefs with him. And then they had a lead in the fourth quarter of the NFC Championship with him last year.

If the 49ers can go that far with Garoppolo, and Lance turns out to be even slightly better than him, wouldn't that make the 49ers the team to beat in the NFL this season?

Why isn't anyone asking that question?

What am I missing?

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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