Trey Lance has not stopped his efforts to improve at the quarterback position, despite Brock Purdy being slated to be the 49ers’ starting quarterback after the departure of Jimmy Garoppolo to the Raiders.
But, Lance has been limited in his growth because of significant injuries in his first two NFL seasons. During his rookie year, Lance broke his right index finger which created lingering effects throughout his first season. In the 2022 campaign, he sustained a broken ankle in the first quarter of the 49ers’ road game against their NFC West rival Rams in Week 2 and missed the remainder of the season.
However, as San Francisco prepares to open its offseason training activities next week, Lance will look exceedingly different. Jeff Christensen, a private quarterbacks coach, paired Lance with Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes during a series of workouts in Dallas in early March to work on his throwing motion.
Christensen told The Athletic that when Lance “stood behind Mahomes” and watched the two-time MVP throw during the session that things began to become a lot easier for the 23-year-old.
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“It was something I was telling him [Lance] to do that he wasn’t quite doing,” Christensen said. “And then he saw Patrick [Mahomes] apply it perfectly. And I think that visual buy-in, that mental buy-in, helped him past that mental hump. …To his credit he just kept getting better.”
Lance has completed 54.9% of his passes through four meager NFL starts. But with Lance’s improvement, it should help with his accuracy as well as limiting his arm soreness.
Since San Francisco started its offseason program in April, Christensen also told The Athletic that Lance had not not experienced any soreness in his arm, compared to experiencing nearly three days of discomfort after each workout. While the 49ers signed veteran signal caller Sam Darnold during the offseason to compete for the starting job, Lance—despite having thrown only 102 NFL passes—could make things interesting throughout the summer, pending his growth.
