The San Francisco 49ers gave up a lot to acquire Trey Lance, giving up significant draft capital to trade up to the No. 3 overall pick in 2021. The move made sense to head coach Kyle Shanahan and general manager John Lynch, given where the roster was headed.
The 49ers knew they were going to have to hand out significant money to keep the team together. That's difficult to do when you have a higher-priced quarterback.
"And when we looked into that stuff, we felt, to pay some of these guys on here, we had to go with a rookie quarterback," Shanahan told The Athletic's Tim Kawakami on "The TK Show" podcast. "So that was more an investment in the team. Now we got to take a risk, like all rookie quarterbacks are, and what are we going to do?
"We made a risk to move up there because we made a decision we were getting one, and we couldn't wait until [the 12th pick] because I believe if we would have waited until 12, I don't think either of them would have been there."
"Either of them" being Lance and Mac Jones, the other quarterback on Shanahan's radar. The New England Patriots ended up selecting Jones at No. 15. The 49ers coach doesn't believe Jones would have lasted that long had the team stayed put.
Kawakami asked Shanahan if he believes the Patriots were planning to jump in front of the 49ers' initial draft spot to grab Jones.
"There's three other teams (in addition to the Patriots)," Shanahan admitted. "Yeah, very strongly [believe Jones would have been gone]."
So after trading up nine spots, why did the 49ers draft Lance over Jones?
"We ended up going with Trey because of what we believed he could do for our team, and the upside of him, and the person that we fell in love with, too," Shanahan explained. "And when we did that, yeah, that's a risk, but we made the risk on our team, and our team was good. We just had to give him some time.
"And he got that time going into his second year, and then he got hurt. Well, you look back to that training camp ... I really loved how our seventh-round draft pick (Brock Purdy) was playing. That didn't mean I was going to give him the reps Trey [deserved]."
The 49ers felt Lance would grow into a solid quarterback as last season progressed. He never got that opportunity, though, and Purdy, the last overall pick in the draft, showed that he belonged in the NFL.
"What he did week in and week out, each week, by the end, it wasn't a tough decision because he had all the film there," Shanahan said.
Purdy showed the coaches enough last season to earn the starting job this season. And last year's success wasn't just because he had a good team around him.
"They gave our team a lot of credit, but I know how good he played," Shanahan said. "And I think anybody who really sits and watches it, whether it's our teammates, whether our coaches, [the belief in Purdy] was strong in the season, but it got stronger in the offseason. It's because what he put on tape was real, and that's what makes it easy, the situation we're in."
Shanahan added, "Injuries happen. And when injuries happen, you don't really lose your job because of an injury, but you give opportunities to someone else. And this guy, who got his opportunity, came in and did stuff on film for me, for John, for all our players, that was as good as we've seen here. And it's going to be real hard to beat out."
