Trey Lance may have his chance to rise in the 49ers quarterback ranks this upcoming season since changing his throwing motion.
The No. 3 overall pick in the 2021 NFL Draft was selected to be San Francisco’s future, but after two seasons and only four starts thanks to a broken right index finger in the team’s preseason finale in 2021, and a fractured ankle in the first quarter of Week 2 last season, Lance’s development has slowed down — opening the doors for former “Mr. Irrelevant” Brock Purdy.
Purdy cemented himself as the starter after leading the 49ers to the NFC Championship last season, where he suffered an elbow injury against the Eagles, and will return after rehabbing from his elbow surgery.
His recovery could be Lance’s gain.
The righty signal caller has spent time working with private quarterbacks coach Jeff Christensen, who said a breakthrough for Lance happened in a practice with his most notable client Patrick Mahomes, where Lance watched him throw.
“I said, ‘Watch this. Watch what he does here,’” Christensen told Matt Barrows of The Athletic.com. “It was something I was telling him to do that he wasn’t quite doing, and then he saw Patrick apply it perfectly. And I think that visual buy-in, that mental buy-in, helped him past that mental hump.”
“And to his credit he just kept getting better. [Over] the last seven days, every day was a substantial jump.”
Christensen said it took four days to identify what needed to change, one of those being accuracy.
Lance completed 54.9 percent of his passes over his limited playing time, which is nearly his 54.7 mark during 2022 training camp and puts him behind Purdy with 69.3 percent and Nate Sudfeld 73.5 percent.
And since Lance’s retooled throw, he is said to have seen no arm soreness, even after throwing a 150 balls in one practice.
“It’s a different feeling, and it can be kind of weird,” Christensen said of Lance’s revamped throwing motion. “And it can be kind of scary. And so it’s a whole different feeling when the ball leaves your finger. To his credit, he slowly kept applying and kept believing.”