From Sports Tips 4 U (@ForNfltips):
Sports Tips, if Brock Purdy hadn’t hurt his elbow, he’d absolutely be taking the first snap of OTAs in May, and Trey Lance would be fighting an uphill battle to get on the field in 2023. But that’s not where we are. Right now, Purdy will be cleared to play football, at best, in training camp, and that, to me, opens a great opportunity for Lance.
Here’s where the Niners were on Lance last summer—they knew that, in the moment, Jimmy Garoppolo was a better quarterback. But the idea was that, by the end of the year, with game reps coming through a firehose, Lance would eventually grow into being the better player and keep climbing from there. Obviously, he went down with a leg injury, so his progress is stuck where it was in Week 2, and Purdy got all those reps and proved himself, and right now is the better option.
Is Lance turning the tables while Purdy is recovering from surgery out of the question? No, it’s not.
Lance is well liked and works his tail off. He’s not as skilled a runner as the Niners had hoped, but he’s a big, strong athlete. The question really is whether he can improve as a passer—he’s not that natural of a thrower of the ball. But Jalen Hurts wasn’t, either, and he developed, so it can happen. And if Lance, through his work with his personal coaches, comes back a different quarterback in the spring and lights up OTAs, then I think the Niners would be thrilled.
Remember, while the plan for now might be to go with Purdy, getting more out of the quarterback you traded three first-round picks for wouldn’t exactly be a bad result for any of the football decision-makers in Santa Clara. So stay tuned. This get interesting.
