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Trey Lance took the blame, but this wasn’t on him

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© Mike Dinovo-USA TODAY Sports

CHICAGO — That was a heaping pile of sh… not very good.

There was a real sense of inevitability that the 49ers would open their season with a win. Given their schedule — especially the projected grueling second half of the season — this felt like an important, “gimme” win that would start the Trey Lance tenure with a layup.

Not quite.

In his first start as the explicitly-named starting quarterback, Lance was a mixed bag. He provided a fairly acute, stern assessment, taking aim at his own performance.

“Made too many mistakes,” Lance said. “Defense kept us in the game. Had a big miss to Tyler Kroft in the end zone, tried to put a perfect ball, should’ve just put it right on him. He was wide open. Turned the ball over, took a sack that knocked us out of field goal range that I shouldn’t have. Missed Deebo on third down. Missed another third down to Jauan. Just too many mistakes.”

There will only be more questions asked of Lance after this. That’s natural, but blaming him for the loss would be a bizarre way to make sense of this game.

This was a masterpiece of interpretive garbage-making by San Francisco. Lance was involved, but not solely.

While there’s not much to feel good about after Sunday, he had some positive moments and a postgame tenor that was simultaneously self-critical and optimistic about the rest of the season.


The talent gap between these two teams was glaring. Chasmic, in fact. But talent doesn’t mean much if you give the worse team an unceasing supply of second chances.

Sunday was the result of letting a bad team stick around. And the Bears? They are a bad team. That’s why the loss leaves such a sour taste.

San Francisco failed to take advantage of crucial chances to expand its lead or prevent Chicago from adding to its tally.

Sometimes the 49ers would seem to make use of an opportunity… and then you’d look at the field to see a haunting, yellow flag waiting with consequences.

The 49ers committed 12 penalties for 99 yards. The Bears committed three for 24 yards. The timing of those penalties was as soul-crushing as the quantity.

“I think it sucks when you know you had the game in hand and a lot of unforced mistakes is what really cost us,” Trent Williams said. “So we’ve got a young team, we’ll bounce back, we’ll be better next week. But anytime you let a team hang around, it’s never gonna be that good.”

That was the message after Sunday’s inventively dumb 19-10 loss; the 49ers beat themselves.

The mistakes which cost them cannot be counted on two hands. Four limbs would struggle to contain the vast expanses of their treachery.

Here’s an incomplete recap:

  • Deebo Samuel fumbled on the 12-yard line on the team’s first drive.
  • Trey Lance overthrew a wide open Tyler Kroft for a would-be touchdown.
  • Dre Greenlaw pulling David Montgomery’s face mask on a run stop that had been secured with out him — Kyle Shanahan singled this out as the worst penalty of the game.
  • Two plays after the Greenlaw face mask penalty, Tashaun Gipson Sr. dropped an interception. Two plays later, former 49er Dante Pettis found himself completely uncovered for a shocking 51-yard touchdown.
  • Charvarius Ward held Dante Pettis on a 3rd-and-9 when Justin Fields ran for 5 yards. Three plays later, Fields was hit badly by Azeez Al-Shaair for a personal foul, setting the Bears up at the 26-yard line. Fields found Equanimeous St. Brown for a touchdown three plays later.
  • Lance was intercepted by Eddie Jackson with the 49ers down by 3. Lance said he thought he looked him off enough, and Kyle Shanahan agreed, saying Jackson just, “made a hell of a play.”
  • On a 2nd-and-11 on the ensuing drive, Javon Kinlaw was called for defensive holding on a 5-yard gain. Khalil Herbert ran in the game-icing touchdown two plays later.

Yes, Lance is involved above, and there were other plays he missed. His 13-of-28 mark for 164 yards with 1 INT wasn’t flattering. But bare in mind, Justin Fields had 19 passing yards before the 51-yard Pettis touchdown and completed eight total passes.

His two touchdown passes came from defensive breakdowns, one of which — the Equanimeous St. Brown corner route — Talanoa Hufanga told KNBR after the game, was his fault.

If you’re assessing anything Lance did from after Herbert’s touchdown in the fourth quarter, your TV wasn’t conveying the monsoon-style situation that was taking place on the field.

When the 49ers had no choice but to throw it, that task was near impossible. Seven of Lance’s 15 incompletions came in those conditions. He was 9-of-17 before that stretch.

Trent Williams assessed it as something of a karmic punishment.

“It just so happened that when we got to really move the ball through the air, that’s when the weather was it’s worst,” Williams said. “So that’s what happens. That’s football.”

It wasn’t a stellar performance on Lance’s part, but the conditions were rough, the penalties were out of control, and without Elijah Mitchell in the second half, the running game stalled.

The 49ers ran for just 61 yards in the second half after 115 in the first. Lance accounted for 33 of those yards.

You may also recall Lance’s predecessor didn’t excel in the 49ers’ last torrential downpour game last season against the Colts. It was a similarly disastrous result, and a fourth-straight loss. Garoppolo had a touchdown and two bad interceptions in that game.

Lance certainly made mistakes, of which he outlined most. But he had some bright moments, and turned difficult situations to positive ones.

He actually overcame three offensive penalties to convert first downs in this game.

  • In Q1: A 2nd-and-3 at the 50, Elijah Mitchell was called for a false start. Lance hit Deebo Samuel for six yards the next play and converted a 3rd-and-2 run for a first down on the ensuing play. This was the opening drive when Samuel fumbled.
  • In Q2: A 3rd-and-3 at the SF 31, Brandon Aiyuk was called for offensive pass interference on what would have been a big chunk completion. Lance ran for a 13-yard first down conversion the next play.
  • In Q4: A 2nd-and-10 at the SF 25, Spencer Burford was called for a false start. Two plays later, Lance converted what was at the time a clutch third-down conversion to Ross Dwelley on 3rd-and-11.

This isn’t “Trey Lance played well, actually” column. He didn’t. There was good. There was bad. In a game like this, the tendency is to remember the bad.

His miss to Kroft is the most glaring one, because he’s supposed to be the guy who makes the big plays that Garoppolo so often failed to make. The sack he took on the next play, as he said, took the 49ers out of field-goal range.

But he was not the main reason the 49ers’ lost this game. He was part of it, as outlined above. but it was the bad penalties and surrounding errors that are largely to blame.

There will be plenty of other opportunities to express concern about Lance, and of this team as a whole, but this muddy mess of a game is probably not the time.

Take a note from the 22-year-old quarterback, who Trent Williams credited for his maturity.

“Man, excited, still got my head up,” Lance said. “Excited to get ready to go this week.”

Maybe he’s too young to be stressed, or just confident. But his tenor is a reminder that it may be wise to pull your hand away from the eject button just yet.