The San Francisco 49ers will start rookie quarterback Trey Lance against the Arizona Cardinals due to Jimmy Garoppolo suffering a calf injury last Sunday against the Seattle Seahawks.
For Lance there are high expectations from 49er fans with this start. With many believing that if he plays well regardless of the result he will take over as starter. Reports have already indicated that won’t happen. Garoppolo will start.
Lance played decently.
San Francisco’s offense got the football first. Lance did get his first mistake out the way quickly. He elected to throw to a deeper target when he needed to find his checkdown or take off with the football and gain yardage with his legs.
He looked a bit better from that point on though. When it came to the 49ers best drives of the first half, Lance got stopped short twice on fourth down. The first negated a field goal opportunity for the recently signed Joey Slye and the second one was at the goal line. Cardinals linebacker Isaiah Simmons came up with the big hit to keep the 49ers quarterback from getting the football over the plane of the goal line.
Unfortunately for Simmons he went immediately to the blue tent and got evaluated for a concussion. He did eventually return to the game.
The 49ers final offensive possession of the first half didn’t go well. Lance got stopped on a nice play by the defense of the Cardinals for a loss of two. Kyle Jusczcyk only managed a yard on a short pass, and Mohamed Sanu dropped the third down throw, which resulted in the first punt of the game for the 49ers.
In the second half the theme for the offense became penalties. Due to the long yardage situations the 49ers did use two of their timeouts early on. Even with that Lance managed to lead two scoring drives. With Deebo Samuel capping it off with a 13 yard run for a touchdown. Slye added a 47-yard field goal.
Something that was noteworthy is that Lance managed to have five passes batted down. This happened due to the young quarterback staring down his intended target.
What 49ers fans saw today was a glimpse of the future. Still it did show that Lance is not ready to take over for Garoppolo at this point. He will get his opportunity if the losses continue to mount. As for the overall grade it’s a C- for the rookie quarterback. The only reason it is not lower is due to the poor play calling for Kyle Shanahan today.