All of the drama of the past month came to a head for the San Francisco 49ers less than an hour into the 2021 NFL Draft in Cleveland on Thursday.
San Francisco moved up to the third pick from 12th overall to find an eventual heir-apparent for current starting quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo.
After being linked more to Alabama product Mac Jones, the 49ers shocked pretty much everyone by selecting North Dakota State product Trey Lance with the third selection.
Lance has been seen as a likely top-10 pick throughout the entire NFL Draft process despite not throwing a pass in a game since back in 2019. Remember, the 2020 FBS college football season was postponed until the spring due to the COVID-19 pandemic. At that point, Lance opted out to prepare for the pros.
To say that the 49ers’ brass consisting of head coach Kyle Shanahan and general manager John Lynch were happy about the selection would be an understatement.
"He's always going to be a threat at any time. Once we had time to connect with him, we fell in love with him. He checked every single box,” Shanahan told reporters following the pick.
Despite rumors to the contrary, the 49ers’ head coach noted that they knew Lance was going to be the pick for the past couple weeks.
As for Lance, he could not be any happier having a chance to be the face of the 49ers and their franchise quarterback moving forward — saying that the call from San Francisco was “surreal.”
A dual-threat quarterback, Lance dominated inferior competition with North Dakota State back in 2019. That season saw the 6-foot-4 signal caller record 2,786 passing yards with 26 touchdowns and zero interceptions. Lance added 1,100 rushing yards and 14 touchdowns on the ground.
His tape tells us a story of one of highest-upside players in the 2021 NFL Draft, No. 1 pick Trevor Lawrence included.
“One-year starter who dazzled in 2019. Lance is mature for his age, but will be just 20 years old at the time of the 2021 NFL Draft,” NFL Media’s Lance Zierlein noted in his scouting report of Lance. “He’s a rare dual-threat quarterback in that he’s tasked with setting his own protections and reading the full field. Coaches rave about his football IQ and film work. They believe he will come into the league more football savvy than most of the quarterbacks in this draft.”
Realistically, Lance finds himself in the best situation of any quarterback of the 2021 NFL Draft in that he could very well sit behind Jimmy Garoppolo for a season before taking over. He also has a great skill-position group in George Kittle, Brandon Aiyuk and Deebo Samuel as well as the game’s best left tackle, Trent Williams.
This is obviously a major backdrop following the selection of Lance No. 3 overall. Reports leading up to the annual NFL Draft indicated that the 49ers were going to trade Garoppolo during the three-day event with the New England Patriots being seen as favorites to land the Super Bowl quarterback.
That changed after New England selected Mac Jones with the 15th overall pick. A few selections earlier, another team in that of the Chicago Bears who were in on Garoppolo drafted signal caller Justin Fields. Meanwhile, the Denver Broncos traded for Teddy Bridgewater on Wednesday.
Right now, the 49ers are running out of potential trade partners. The Washington Football Team missed out on the top-five quarterbacks Thursday evening. They could make sense. The same thing could be said about the Houston Texans depending on Deshaun Watson’s legal situation.
If San Francisco can’t find value for Garoppolo in a trade, it now might make sense for the team to retain him as a stop-gap starter next season before turning to Lance in 2022. That will depend heavily on the quarterback’s own thought process.
