After a tumultuous start to his NFL career, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Trey Lance looked to make the most of his offseason, especially given that he was fully cleared to practice from his fractured ankle in February.
As a result, he sought out well-renowned quarterbacks coach Jeff Christensen, who also works with Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, to fix his mechanics and improve as a pocket passer.
Lance had been with a couple of different quarterback coaches to begin his career, first starting with Quincy Avery before moving to John Beck, and now Christensen.
How did Lance get in touch with his new quarterbacks coach to begin his offseason work? Through the help of a former teammate, Zeb Nolan, who was a quarterback at North Dakota State during Lance's stint there in college.
"I had a friend his name is [former North Dakota State quarterback] Zeb Nolan that I played with in college," Lance said. "And he had worked with Jeff, and we talk ball all the time, so we had talked about it and I talked to Jeff. And then, yeah, we started working together and that was it."
While Lance wouldn't divulge details about his work with Christensen, it was clear some improvements were made with his mechanics and footwork that was illustrated in a video released by Dallas videographer Kai Visuals.
"I don't want to get into all the details, but I feel really good about what we've accomplished and I'm going to continue to work and continue to get better," Lance shared.
Alongside Christensen, Lance got to work with Patrick Mahomes, which was a great experience for the young quarterback as he got to learn from one of the best minds in the game.
"Yeah, I think I talked about it during OTAs, but it's just awesome to be around a guy like that," Lance said. "Obviously, he's probably doing it at the highest level there is maybe, I don't want to say ever, I don't want to get into controversy, but he's playing at obviously a very high level. Multiple Super Bowls, multiple big games, so just being able to pick his brain about everything in the season, offseason, his schedule, how he sees the game, everything like that."
Following organized team activities(OTAs) and minicamp, Lance resumed work with Christensen over the past 40 days to get ready for training camp, where he's competed with Sam Darnold and Brandon Allen for the backup role to quarterback Brock Purdy.
While Lance's reps have been limited so far, it'll be intriguing to see whether his work with Christensen can translate to the field over the next week of practices.
