The San Francisco 49ers might be in a spot of bother at the quarterback spot according to reports coming out about Trey Lance.

Having been very much down near the bottom of the pile in the NFL recently, posting 4 straight losing seasons between 2015 and 2018, things have started to look a little better in the past three seasons for the 49ers.

In both 2019 and 2021 they managed to reach the conference championship, going one step further in 2019 by reaching the Super Bowl before losing to the Kansas City Chiefs. 

Sandwiched between those two seasons was a pretty awful 2020 campaign which saw them finish 6-10, although key injuries to the likes of Jimmy Garoppolo and Nick Bosa played a huge part in their major step back. 

What that poor season allowed them to do though was fall down the NFL standings and allow them to pick near the top of the 2021 NFL Draft, a draft in which they used their first-round selection on quarterback Trey Lance after a little more movement via a trade with the Miami Dolphins. 

Waiting in the wings for his opportunity

When a quarterback is taken that high in the draft, especially if a team trades up to get him, the common thought is that he might start straight away, afterall the team gave up so much capital for him that it wouldn’t make sense to just leave him sitting there.

But sitting there is exactly what Lance was made to do last season, with Garoppolo back from injury, he remained the starter for the team for the majority of the season, starting 15 of their 17 games, with Lance starting 2 and winning 1 against the Houston Texans in Week 17. 

Still has some work to do though

That might be his last bit of action for some time, because it appears as though after a year of learning and scattered minutes, he still needs to make some changes to his game in order to impress the 49ers coaches.

According to a claim from journalist Matt Lombardo, what he’s done so far hasn’t exactly endeared him to his bosses at Levi’s Stadium: 

They say that the second year is arguably the most important for a new quarterback in the league, and by the sounds of it, Lance’s year is going to be even more so important.

Because with Garoppolo only 30-years-old, he still has some years left in him, so it’s not as if the 49ers are in a rush to move on from him and they might be tempted to ride him out. 

But in doing so, they might live to regret using that pick on him when it could have been used on someone else to take them over the top and closer to winning a Super Bowl title.