The calls for Trey Lance seemed to grow louder during Sunday’s loss to the Green Bay Packers, but San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan has made things clear: there will be no changes at quarterback.
“There’s not a quarterback battle right now,” he said during his session with media on Wednesday. “We’re going with our starting quarterback who I think is playing very well. I’m happy that he is, so Trey is not thrown into any situations he has to do too early. If he ever is thrown into that, then I know Trey will deal with that and he’ll get better as it goes, but we have a luxury where we don’t have to do that yet to Trey or to our team.”
Jimmy Garoppolo started on Sunday, completing 25 of 40 pass attempts for 257 yards, two touchdowns and in interception, but struggled to get the offense moving until the second half.
Lance actually came in and scored the Niners’ first touchdown of the game on a goal-line run just before halftime.
The Niners have been using Lance on situational plays — he’s played seven snaps in three games — while Garoppolo plays the majority of the snaps as quarterback.
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“Trey’s our backup quarterback,” Shanahan said. “This isn’t the preseason. We’re not just going back and forth all the time.”
Yet, if the offense continues to struggle or show inconsistences under Garoppolo, Shanahan will be sure to hear more questions about Lance.
“We have put [Lance on the field,” Shanahan said. “We do it in situations. You can go with whatever you want what I say in training camp and you can expand on that or. Not. But I think I was asked coming off the field of our third [preseason] game if we’d see this in the regular season, I said, ‘probably not.’ So, I think a lot of words have been put in my mouth with some of that stuff or exaggerated pretty big.
“So, I pretty much keep it pretty real to everyone, but I don’t just tell everyone the answer. But I’ve been pretty consistent with that.”
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