Depending on the pontificating person, 49ers quarterback Trey Lance is either ready or he is not.
The truth is that everyone is just guessing.
That means everyone.
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"The answer is you never know until you know," 49ers general manager John Lynch told NBC Sports Bay Area with a laugh recently.
The 49ers hoped to have the Jimmy Garoppolo situation settled long before now. But with word Garoppolo required shoulder surgery and four months of rehabilitation, NFL teams in need of a quarterback looked elsewhere.
The only teams that remain with some degree of questions are the Seattle Seahawks, Carolina Panthers and Houston Texans — though the Texans seem to be content with Davis Mills.
Garoppolo remains on the 49ers’ roster, but it seems that not much changes for the team’s plan for 2022.
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The 49ers still need the $25 million cap savings from Garoppolo’s contract to retain important parts of the team, such as Deebo Samuel and Nick Bosa.
And after guaranteeing $2 million for presumptive backup quarterback Nate Sudfeld, it would appear the 49ers’ quarterback depth chart is tentatively aligned.
That, of course, includes Lance at the top with the plan for him to take every first-team practice snap during the offseason program and training camp.
The 49ers decided a year ago to eventually move on from Garoppolo because of a history of injuries and the belief that they could find a long-term improvement. Garoppolo fits nicely into the middle-tier of quarterbacks in the NFL.
The 49ers did not trade up to No. 3 overall in the 2021 NFL Draft with the idea of selecting an average starting quarterback.
While the 49ers cannot be certain about what Lance will deliver to the organization, the man responsible for assembling the roster likes the direction he saw things heading throughout last season.
"But you have belief,” Lynch said of Lance. “You have faith. There's indications, there's traits, there's qualities, there's competitive greatness that you see in the brief glimpses that you did see him play. There's practice -- that really does matter. There's development. There's all those things that go in.”
Lance received rave reviews from teammates over the final weeks of the season as he carried out his duties as the scout team quarterback.
And he showed more than a few glimpses in Week 17, when he threw for 115 yards and two touchdowns in the second half to help rally the 49ers to a must-win over the Texans.
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The 49ers figured a year ago that Trevor Lawrence and Zach Wilson will be chosen in the top two spots in the draft. Lynch and coach Kyle Shanahan decided on Lance after also considering Mac Jones and Justin Fields.
Even now, the 49ers go back a year to the work that was done that led them to make the call to Lance on draft night.
"And then there's our initial evaluation,” Lynch said. “We put so much time into Trey. Knowing what we thought he was, and then meeting him and saying, 'OK, what is he really?' You feel even stronger about what that is."
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