Originally posted by 49ers81:
For the poster who inquired, I actually have called out some of the posts who were hyper critical of Lance. Just like it is too early to be falling all ourselves telling everybody how great he is going to be it is too early to say he was the worst pick in team history or that he is going to be a bust which are both equally ludicrous takes. It's just that there seem to be fewer of those types around so they're easier to ignore,
I don't have the slightest idea how Lance is going to work out. I haven't seen him play enough to even have much of an opinion of him at all at this point. In fact my entire assessment consists of four things.
1) He seems like he throws a decent deep ball.
2) While he is certainly more mobile than Jimmy I don't get the impression that he is anywhere near the elite runner that some others seem to believe. But that's okay because I like my QB's to play from the pocket so any kind of escape-ability he does possess will be a nice bonus.
3) From all accounts he is a good guy, a hard worker and someone who is interested in improving his game, all pluses.
4) Through the pre-season and the 10 quarters he played during the regular season he only completed something like 57% of his passes. There could be a lot of reasons for that so there's really no reason to raise the red flags yet but it will be something to keep an eye on moving forward. I'm no expert on schemes but it seems to me that a lot of Kyle's offense is built around the QB getting the ball out of his hands and into the hands of his play makers and letting them do the work. Seems like only completing 57% of your passes would leave a lot of lost opportunities on the field. But that is a number that could easily be improved upon with more reps and more experience in the system so I'm not overly concerned about it at this point.
The bottom line is I'm looking forward to seeing him play and hope that he turns out to be everything the team thought he could be when they drafted him. I supported Jimmy when he was the starter and was completely okay with him getting the call last year. Now Lance has the opportunity to step up and earn the job. Hopefully he'll take it and run with it. I know I'll certainly be rooting for him to succeed. Go Niners!
This is a fair post.
The one thing I would say (and I've made the argument here in the past) is that it's fair to be critical of his selection from a strategic perspective.
It's not an acceptable strategy to burn 3 1st round picks on a player who can't make an immediate impact on your team, regardless of his future potential, and this is additionally problematic when your team is a championship contender (as they were in 21, and could/should be in 22).
Getting no immediate impact in the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd round of the draft AND spending two additional 1sts in the process Is a failure. It effectively handicapped the '21 team, and now we very well may handicap the '22 team's potential as well working through Lance's growing pains and potential limitations.
I understand the jackals here will cry that the team was/is also handicapped by Jimmy. That's absolutely true, but you spent a ton of capital that could have immediately addressed that issue, or strengthened the team elsewhere.
I got a 49er tattoo by my ribs after a 2-14 season
