Originally posted by DonnieDarko:
on insisting to call designed runs for him
when he got a first down earlier and everyone cheered, i told my brother "dude i dont like that, hes going to get hurt". and bam, gone for the year.
Everyone knows injuries happen in football. When they happen to your QB1, they can be devastating and thus, you do what you can to limit your QB's exposure to crushing hits - especially up the middle by big DLs and LBs.
You especially want to limit such hits on your young, developing QB whom you invested a lot of draft capital - one that needs to be playing when it's his time (like now). One that needs all the game experience he can get.
Lance is a dual-threat QB but not in the way where you call more than three or maybe four designed runs a game, IMO. For the zone read calls like today where he got injured, keep those at a minimum, too, and when he does run keep it to the outside and not up the middle if at all possible. Hopefully, Lance will do this going forward.
I can see why so many fans, myself included, have questioned and even hated all the designed runs called for Lance in the starts he's had. He's not Josh Allen, and he's not as big as Josh Allen. In the first quarter alone today, he had at least two designed runs by my count.
Though today's injury was on a zone read type of play, what happened was what so many fans feared could happen to Lance at any given time with the way he's been used. He's already taken a pounding on the limited playing time he's had to start his NFL career. Yes, he has to learn to get out of harm's way better by sliding, etc. But the play calling choices can help him, too.
Now, Lance loses more valuable playing time and is just that much further removed from the time he's played a long stretch of football, which was in college at a lower college level.
Now, the Niners go from having the strongest room at the most important position in the game to one that's considerably weaker.
I still like this team's chances with Garoppolo at QB1 and his familiarity with this scheme and personnel along with this team's strong D and improved ST (besides today's blocked FG hiccup). But was really looking forward to seeing what Lance could do this year for this team with extended time playing QB in the NFL.
