Week 2 Seachickens @ 49ers

[Jikkle]

Missed the injury, the replays show him being sandwiched between linemen and it sounded like it was a design run, not a scramble?

Maybe Shanahan didn't really feel like developing Lance this year once he re-signed Jimmy G.

Jimmy's shoulder got a clean bill of health so they re-signed him and the national press was all calling Jimmy taking over at some point in the season.

Fortunately, the Seahawks imploded with those turnovers.

They're playing for a high pick so that play call for the RB pass that was intercepted in the end zone, maybe a tank move.

Jimmy's first series after he took over he was throwing down the field, leading to the TD. But they the play calling got conservative again.

It was a designed run not a scramble.

I'll play devil's advocate in the fact I don't feel there is some grand conspiracy on Shanahan's part that he's upset he didn't get Mac Jones and he's purposely trying to get Lance hurt.

In general Shanahan just is not careful and manages players' health poorly. Seems like he has the play he wants to run and he runs it with the best players whether it's good for them or not.

With Lance it's not that Shanahan had the wrong idea and I wouldn't rake him over the coals for running Lance. It's very much a run-first offense and Lance's ability to run is a big addition and a tool in the toolbox that should be used. He's a raw 1st year starter so it makes sense to lean on his legs more than the arm and as time goes on you ramp up the throwing. Also while you want to protect guys from getting hurt you can't keep them in bubble wrap either and not use their talents.

Where I would rake him over the coals though is you can run Lance without it being power runs up the middle, giving him no shot to slide, and letting him take a beating. I get that he's a big thick kid that can take some punishment but he's still a QB that's not really built or trained to take an RB likey beating. I get too that getting your ankle twisted in the wrong direction is more on the flukey side of injuries but you still could've severely reduced the odds of that happening by giving him runs where he can get his yards and get down not runs he has to hit a gap and get hit by LBs as soon as he clears it.

[Jikkle]

And talk about your case of slipping on a banana peel, doing a back flip, and landing on your feet.

The Jimmy G situation has been a mess since they couldn't trade him back in March and now bringing him back as a backup is a huge accidental genius move.

I mean I don't think this team can win a Super Bowl with Jimmy G but at least we know he's good enough to get to the playoffs and maybe win there with a stacked roster.

[Samurai]

Aside from the Lance injury it was a nice bounce-back win.

Just one penalty and it wasn't one I would say was a terrible mental mistake but just playing the WR a little to aggressively.

Defense pitched a complete shutout and executed cleanly.

Offense was just ok and got the job done. Felt like it was a typical Jimmy G lead offense where he leads a few good drives and hits open receivers but has some throws that are duds and stalled-out drives.

Mrs. Lincoln, aside from your husband being assassinated, it was a pretty good play, wasn't it?

Losing a full year of development for Lance is a huge loss; there's no sugarcoating that. Having to dust-off the 1920 Canton Bulldogs playbook (no pass plays over 10 yards) only adds more insult to injury.

I guess the injury is leaving a pretty salty taste right now.

[thesack12]

And talk about your case of slipping on a banana peel, doing a back flip, and landing on your feet.

The Jimmy G situation has been a mess since they couldn't trade him back in March and now bringing him back as a backup is a huge accidental genius move.

I mean I don't think this team can win a Super Bowl with Jimmy G but at least we know he's good enough to get to the playoffs and maybe win there with a stacked roster.

Lance's injury is obviously quite unfortunate and very disappointing.

However, it could be IMMENSELY worse right now.

Imagine staring down the barrel of trying to stomach 15 games of Nate Sudfeld right now.

As incredibly depressing as that would be, now add onto the top of that the fact that the 49ers don't own their 1st round pick in the upcoming draft.

Sports fandom wise, Its hard to think of a more hopeless/joyless situation than that.

[thesack12]

A question for those talking of conspiracy and Kyle trying to sabotage Trey Lance.

If you believe that Kyle was actively trying to get Trey hurt because he didn't want him, or didn't like him, didn't want to play him or whatever, don't you also have to believe that Kyle also holds similar feelings towards Deebo? Kyle sure as hell over exposes Deebo to extra hits and injury as well.

Also, Kyle called back to back running plays for Jimmy on that last possession at the goal line. Doesn't that also qualify as exposing your QB to injury? Keeping in mind that rookie Mr Irrelevant Brock Purdy is now the only QB insurance.

Criticism of all of the power running plays for Lance is entirely justified and certainly has merit. But insinuating that Kyle was intentionally trying to get Lance hurt is quite narrow minded and frankly pretty ridiculous.

[wco81]

Saw a graphic during the game. Trey had like a dozen to 15 plays before his injury and only 3 were passes.

Out of Jimmy's first dozen plays, the ratio was reversed, only 3 runs.

[CrimsonCrew]

I was (mostly) joking when I mentioned the conspiracy theory earlier. Just giving vent to my frustrations about Shanahan's handling of Lance, which has been awful. He runs him up the middle way too often. Sure, you don't entirely remove the play from the playbook, but Trey took a ton of punishment in week one, and everyone saw it. And in his first start last year, he got hurt running too much. So why, in a game that we should be able to win with a conservative, run-first game plan that doesn't risk Lance, is he repeatedly running between all those huge dudes?

That said, this is part of why I wasn't crazy about the Lance pick. He is super inexperienced playing against this level of talent, and it's become pretty clear that he doesn't know how to protect himself. The play call today was awful, but Lance contributed to the injury by doing a weird partial slide just before contact, putting him in a very bad position that resulted in getting bent back on the ankle.

[Pattersonca65]

I was (mostly) joking when I mentioned the conspiracy theory earlier. Just giving vent to my frustrations about Shanahan's handling of Lance, which has been awful. He runs him up the middle way too often. Sure, you don't entirely remove the play from the playbook, but Trey took a ton of punishment in week one, and everyone saw it. And in his first start last year, he got hurt running too much. So why, in a game that we should be able to win with a conservative, run-first game plan that doesn't risk Lance, is he repeatedly running between all those huge dudes?

That said, this is part of why I wasn't crazy about the Lance pick. He is super inexperienced playing against this level of talent, and it's become pretty clear that he doesn't know how to protect himself. The play call today was awful, but Lance contributed to the injury by doing a weird partial slide just before contact, putting him in a very bad position that resulted in getting bent back on the ankle.

I just dont think Shanahan trusts Lance to throw the ball. Why name Lance the starter if you arent going to let him throw the ball?

[Jikkle]

I was (mostly) joking when I mentioned the conspiracy theory earlier. Just giving vent to my frustrations about Shanahan's handling of Lance, which has been awful. He runs him up the middle way too often. Sure, you don't entirely remove the play from the playbook, but Trey took a ton of punishment in week one, and everyone saw it. And in his first start last year, he got hurt running too much. So why, in a game that we should be able to win with a conservative, run-first game plan that doesn't risk Lance, is he repeatedly running between all those huge dudes?

That said, this is part of why I wasn't crazy about the Lance pick. He is super inexperienced playing against this level of talent, and it's become pretty clear that he doesn't know how to protect himself. The play call today was awful, but Lance contributed to the injury by doing a weird partial slide just before contact, putting him in a very bad position that resulted in getting bent back on the ankle.

I just dont think Shanahan trusts Lance to throw the ball. Why name Lance the starter if you arent going to let him throw the ball?

I don't know if it's that completely that or if Shanahan was doing the sensible thing in leaning into the running game early on in the season and ramping up the passing game more and more as the season goes on and Trey gets more experienced.

The formula for Lance as QB this season was always going to be a heavy dose of the running game with passing attempts 20 or under and up to that point the running game was working as it pretty much put us in the redzone on both drives.

So it might be that Shanahan doesn't trust Lance to throw but Shanahan will usually default to running the ball if it's working and it was working.

It's not like he has a ton of trust in Jimmy throwing the ball either and he simply has to pass more because Jimmy can't run it and his presence doesn't help the running game either.

[Pattersonca65]

I was (mostly) joking when I mentioned the conspiracy theory earlier. Just giving vent to my frustrations about Shanahan's handling of Lance, which has been awful. He runs him up the middle way too often. Sure, you don't entirely remove the play from the playbook, but Trey took a ton of punishment in week one, and everyone saw it. And in his first start last year, he got hurt running too much. So why, in a game that we should be able to win with a conservative, run-first game plan that doesn't risk Lance, is he repeatedly running between all those huge dudes?

That said, this is part of why I wasn't crazy about the Lance pick. He is super inexperienced playing against this level of talent, and it's become pretty clear that he doesn't know how to protect himself. The play call today was awful, but Lance contributed to the injury by doing a weird partial slide just before contact, putting him in a very bad position that resulted in getting bent back on the ankle.

I just dont think Shanahan trusts Lance to throw the ball. Why name Lance the starter if you arent going to let him throw the ball?

I don't know if it's that completely that or if Shanahan was doing the sensible thing in leaning into the running game early on in the season and ramping up the passing game more and more as the season goes on and Trey gets more experienced.

The formula for Lance as QB this season was always going to be a heavy dose of the running game with passing attempts 20 or under and up to that point the running game was working as it pretty much put us in the redzone on both drives.

So it might be that Shanahan doesn't trust Lance to throw but Shanahan will usually default to running the ball if it's working and it was working.

It's not like he has a ton of trust in Jimmy throwing the ball either and he simply has to pass more because Jimmy can't run it and his presence doesn't help the running game either.[/quote]

Shanahan looks like he is calling plays for Lance the same way he was last season. Last season was understandable as Lance was a rookie and a backup but he now went through the offseason and training camp as the starter. What did Lance have in total? Two attempts. Seems half the third down passing downs either Lance does a QB called run or the 49ers call some kind of sweep. It is not a away to win games.

]It's not like he has a ton of trust in Jimmy throwing the ball either and he simply has to pass more because Jimmy can't run it and his presence doesn't help the running game either.

I just don't by the running angle. Shanahan doesn't trust Jimmy to throw deep or throw certain routes but Jimmy throws it on critical downs. Shanahan doesn't seem to trust Lance to pass on key downs. Saying Shanahan is being conservative with Lance is an understatement,

[CrimsonCrew]

The managing of Lance has been absolutely baffling. Last year, I get it. You're trying to win games by the time Lance was playing. But this year, he's had time in the system. You've got to give him enough rope to show what he can do. And these early games against bad teams are the right place to do it because you can come back from mistakes and you shouldn't have to rely on him making dangerous plays with his legs (obviously circumstances affected that against Chicago).

What makes this more confusing is that Lance wasn't awful in the first game. He had some really nice throws and some good chunk plays. Yes, he needs to improve the speed of his reads, be more decisive, learn what "open" means in the NFL relative to college. But I don't think you can pin the loss on him unless he was missing wide open guys that I wasn't seeing (obviously he did miss the throw to Kroft, I'm using missing here in the sense of not seeing them). Yesterday, we had an opportunity to let him test his arm and vision against a young backfield and a limited pass rush. Sure, run the ball early to get a lead, but don't run HIM early, up the middle, when their big guys are still in there.

As I said before, I just CANNOT understand playing it so conservatively in the preseason - five passes against Green Bay, sitting him against Minnesota, and eleven passes against Houston - and then being so aggressive with him in the regular season. This is a kid who needs all the in-game seasoning he can get. He should have been playing the entire first half of every preseason game at a minimum. Instead, you're so worried about getting him hurt that you don't give him the chance to read the field, feel pressure, scramble in live if somewhat toned-down action. But then, when the bullets are flying you expose him to big hits repeatedly week in and week out. It's absurd.

Yes, with Lance at QB, we had to expect that it would be harder to sustain drives. We would need to rely more on big plays, including him doing things with his legs. But he is capable of big plays with his arm, and we needed to give him the opportunity to do that while using his running sparingly. Moot point now, I guess, but man is it frustrating.

[arich35]

The managing of Lance has been absolutely baffling. Last year, I get it. You're trying to win games by the time Lance was playing. But this year, he's had time in the system. You've got to give him enough rope to show what he can do. And these early games against bad teams are the right place to do it because you can come back from mistakes and you shouldn't have to rely on him making dangerous plays with his legs (obviously circumstances affected that against Chicago).

What makes this more confusing is that Lance wasn't awful in the first game. He had some really nice throws and some good chunk plays. Yes, he needs to improve the speed of his reads, be more decisive, learn what "open" means in the NFL relative to college. But I don't think you can pin the loss on him unless he was missing wide open guys that I wasn't seeing (obviously he did miss the throw to Kroft, I'm using missing here in the sense of not seeing them). Yesterday, we had an opportunity to let him test his arm and vision against a young backfield and a limited pass rush. Sure, run the ball early to get a lead, but don't run HIM early, up the middle, when their big guys are still in there.

As I said before, I just CANNOT understand playing it so conservatively in the preseason - five passes against Green Bay, sitting him against Minnesota, and eleven passes against Houston - and then being so aggressive with him in the regular season. This is a kid who needs all the in-game seasoning he can get. He should have been playing the entire first half of every preseason game at a minimum. Instead, you're so worried about getting him hurt that you don't give him the chance to read the field, feel pressure, scramble in live if somewhat toned-down action. But then, when the bullets are flying you expose him to big hits repeatedly week in and week out. It's absurd.

Yes, with Lance at QB, we had to expect that it would be harder to sustain drives. We would need to rely more on big plays, including him doing things with his legs. But he is capable of big plays with his arm, and we needed to give him the opportunity to do that while using his running sparingly. Moot point now, I guess, but man is it frustrating.

Feel the same way.
That is why it is hard not to start thinking that Kyle thought he was expendable so was fine putting him in those positions because Jimmy was still there to fall back on. As soon as Jimmy comes in he does PA with routes downfield, does he really think Trey isn't capable of that?