© Kirthmon F. Dozier | 2021 Sep 12
Tuesday’s game vs. the Eagles seemed like the ideal opportunity to give Trey Lance snaps. The 49ers offense was stagnant in the first half, in part because Jimmy Garoppolo was struggling mightily. It was a contrasting situation to last week’s dominant offensive performance vs. the Lions, a game which Lance took five snaps.
Yet, Lance remained on the bench for the first half, and didn’t see the field in the second half either.
It seemed to be a clear signal that Lance is far from ready to take over for Garoppolo. On Monday, Kyle Shanahan explained why Lance didn’t see the field, but said that it wasn’t pre-planned.
“No, I never have a plan that ‘Hey, I’m going to use him or I’m not going to use him.’ It’s always an option throughout the game,” Shanahan said. “It’s been two games and I’ve never had him in the openers and I’ve never had him as a designated time. I plan on doing that week-to-week and whenever I feel like putting him in. You saw when I did in Week 1 and I never got that urge in Week 2.”
What exactly Shanahan is looking for as a reason to bring Lance in is anybody’s guess. In Week 1, Lance was primarily used in the Red Zone and on short yardage situations. Those were few and far between in the first half for the 49ers. In the second half, the offense started playing better, and perhaps Shanahan thought it was bad timing to shake it up.
“Yeah, I understand every angle that people want to take with it,” Shanahan said. “But I also understand that we’re an NFL team and we’re trying to win each game and we do have a starting quarterback and that usually makes it pretty simple. But when your backup quarterback does have a skill set that can bring different things to the game, that’s what gives him an option for us to do. He has something that someone has to prepare for week in and week out. And I think that’s an awesome club that we have in our bag that we can use at any time.
“But you don’t really make decisions based off your team of just putting a guy in totally just for how that is for him in the future. I think that’d be irresponsible to everybody else in the room. You do it if you think it gives you a chance based off of what’s going on in that game, that game only. In the meantime, yeah, it’s nice for a guy to get out there. But if it wasn’t because he was bringing a different element that we thought could help us with something that we’re going against, there’s no other reason that we would do it.”