Key takeaway from OTAs: The San Francisco 49ers are serious about making Lance a starter

While some San Francisco 49ers fans twist and turn with every pundit’s take, or national reporter’s angle or rumor about the quarterback situation, there’s little uncertainty coming from the team.

Yes, Jimmy Garoppolo is on the roster. And, yes, there’s the potential of a sticky situation coming in training camp if the 49ers are unable to trade or decide against releasing Garoppolo before that — and if they allow him to practice when training camp begins later this summer.

But everything else coach Kyle Shanahan and the players say indicates the team is moving ahead with Trey Lance as its starting quarterback.

Shanahan doesn’t consider the quarterback situation fluid, meaning what he said at the owner’s meetings in March about the expectations surrounding Lance remain true. He expects Lance to be the starting quarterback. It’s the same for the belief that Garoppolo will be traded at some point before his $24.2 million base salary is guaranteed at the start of the regular season in September.

“Nothing’s changed since (Garoppolo’s) surgery,” Shanahan said. “We were where we were at before the surgery, and then he got the surgery so everything’s been put on hold. I expect him, at some time, most likely, to be traded. But who knows — that’s not a guarantee. It’s been exactly on hold when that (surgery) happened and when he’s healthy we’ll see what happens.”

Garoppolo had the procedure to repair a damaged capsule in his throwing shoulder in early March. He isn’t expected to resume throwing until June or July, which essentially made him untradeable while the game of quarterback musical chairs was played throughout the NFL earlier in the spring.

Lance, in the meantime, is operating as San Francisco’s new starter. He threw 18 passes during seven-on-seven drills during Tuesday’s OTA practice that was open to reporters (he completed 16 while mostly throwing to underneath targets at running back and tight end).

It was the second full-team practice of the offseason and many of Lance’s most-talented teammates were missing from the voluntary session, including tight end George Kittle (who spent the session in the weight room), receiver Deebo Samuel, left tackle Trent Williams and center Alex Mack, who has spent the offseason considering retirement. It’s unclear if Mack will play for the 49ers this season.

Regardless, Lance is no longer operating like a rookie.

“I definitely think he’s taken ownership for sure,” Kittle said. “You can kinda tell that, even in meetings and stuff he’ll talk. He’s assuming responsibility.”

Lance as QB 1

Lance worked hard to avoid saying anything controversial in his rare news conferences during his rookie season while he was developing behind Garoppolo. It’s often a rookie’s prerogative to avoid saying anything explosive that could serve as talk radio or social media fodder. But on Tuesday, Lance seemed more comfortable 13 months removed from the 49ers using three first-round draft picks to trade up for him with the No. 3 overall pick.

“This is the headline question, huh?” Lance joked with a reporter who asked if he was more comfortable in a leadership role. “I don’t know. Yeah, I guess you could say that. But I feel like I’m in a good spot right now, mentally, physically. I’m excited. I’m having a ton of fun out there with these guys and it’s only day two, so getting to compete with our defense is another thing that, man, they talk a lot, but it’s a lot of fun. But yeah, I’m excited for this year.

“The leadership stuff ... that’s just being a good guy in the locker room, but that’s stuff that’s earned. That’s not really anything I can say to be a leader. But, I’m just trying to be a good guy, be a good teammate, have my teammates back at the end of the day.”

The 49ers are entering new territory. They haven’t gone through a quarterback transition since Garoppolo was acquired via trade from the Patriots midway through the 2017 season. That was Shanahan’s first season as 49ers coach. Kittle was a rookie who described his learning of the offense as running around like a chicken with his head cut off. San Francisco didn’t have anything close to the foundation its built over the last five seasons.

This year San Francisco’s offense is in an entirely different place.

Shanahan is entering his sixth season, the team has former All Pros at tight end (Kittle), receiver (Samuel) and left tackle (Williams). The 49ers are expected to be formidable in the running game with Elijah Mitchell returning for his second season after setting San Francisco’s rookie rushing record, third-round pick Tyrion Davis-Price from LSU and returning veteran Jeff Wilson Jr., who averaged 4.8 yards per carry in his last healthy season of 2020.

“I think we’ve got really good players on the offensive side of the football. We have a lot of confident players too,” Kittle said. “I think (Shanahan) has a better understanding of how to install the offense he wants installed, so we run it the way he wants it to be ran because — I mean, (the way) we installed this week was a complete 180 of how we installed it my rookie season. And the way it’s coached, more details on specific things how Kyle wants. When you can learn it like that, and Kyle knows how he wants to do it, I think it’s just beneficial for all of us to re-learn the offense as well. That’s one of the benefits of being at OTAs.”

New offensive look for 49ers

The offense is going to look different from what it was with Garoppolo pulling the strings. Just over 18% of Lance’s throws last season went over 20 yards while Garoppolo tried such throws at a 7.6% clip. Lance is more mobile and could be incorporated into the running game, and he can ad lib with his legs when plays break down far more than Garoppolo.

But Lance is still an unproven commodity. He had just 318 pass attempts during his entire college career (Garoppolo has 1,324 during his five seasons with San Francisco). Which means Shanahan has to figure out Lance’s strengths and weaknesses despite not having a large sample to pull from.

Figuring out how to shape his new offense is part of this offseason process. Some of that is relying on core tenants of his scheme while another side is trial and error.

“There’s certain principles to what you think a quarterback has to do,” Shanahan said. “For everybody, you’d love them to be able to do the drop back game, the play action game. You’d love to move them out on boot legs. You’d love to have big throws, short throws, screens, everything. And there’s a time in every game that you usually need one of those, so you try them in everything and almost every quarterback at this level is capable of doing everything.”

With all the first-team reps throughout the offseason, Shanahan will have an opportunity to learn what works best for Lance and what doesn’t.

“You find out how consistent they are. And there’s going to be certain areas that are strengths and certain areas that are weaknesses, just like every other quarterback I’ve coached,” Shanahan said. “And you put them through all of that and you don’t try to hide it. You try to understand it. There’s usually nothing that you can’t do, but you find out what’s hard on a person.

“So you do that if you absolutely have to. And you always try to find avenues to where you put them in an advantageous situation where they’re confident, because they know this is automatic. You know they can do that. And eventually people take that away and you have to go to the next thing and you have to get good at that so you can bring the other thing back. And I think that’s kind of the story at every position.”

Things only become automatic for quarterbacks after practice time and game reps. What was clear after Tuesday is the 49ers are bent on Lance getting both.