The 49ers Should Stick with Trey Lance, Even if Jimmy Garoppolo is Healthy

Trey Lance recently drew the second start of his young career and netted his first career win as a starter. He looked impressive and showed a bunch of flashes and frankly looked better than Jimmy Garoppolo. As this team continues to make a playoff push and has high hopes through the playoffs, should Kyle Shanahan hand over the keys of the offense to Trey Lance? The short answer is yes. Trey is more dynamic in every aspect of the game and adds a bunch of new elements that could take this offense to another dimension.

First off, let’s just break down the game Lance just played against the Texans. He had a great second game, netting a 0.22 EPA/play, which was 11th best in week 17. He also had an 8.5% CPOE which suggests that Lance isn’t as inaccurate as the common perception. But what actually stands out the most is the 11.6 aDot(average depth of target), which ranked 1st on the week. This is what’s going to take this Niners offense to a whole other level. A quarterback who can stretch the field and hit deep shots is incredibly important in today’s NFL. Quarterbacks like Mahomes, Rodgers, Allen, and Herbert are all elite due to their great deep ball. We can see in the chart below that Lance wasn’t scared to take aggressive shots, most impressive of them the 40+ yard TD to Deebo Samuel. In fact, he threw a total of 205 yards on passes 10 yards across the line of scrimmage, which is the most of any 49ers quarterback in the past 3 years(incidentally when Jimmy joined the team), per Next Gen Stats. This goes to show that Trey Lance was more aggressive in his second career start than Jimmy G was in any of his games with the Niners, which is an incredibly valuable trait for a quarterback to have, and come playoff time it will pay off.

Another trait Lance possesses that Jimmy doesn’t is the ability to extend plays and make something out of nothing. Lance’s time to throw was about a second more than Jimmy which would actually be one of the longest times to throw this season. The real hook here, though, is that Lance only took one sack. According to PFF, A QB’s EPA/play is actually higher if you hold onto the ball for more than the average amount of time without taking a sack(which Lance is already incredibly good at), rather than throwing it quicker, which is essentially the meaning of “hero ball”. Elite players like Patrick Mahomes, Justin Herbert, and Josh Allen, all fit this very well, as they hold onto the ball for a while before throwing it, too, and it pays off a lot. As we can see Jimmy G’s time to throw is actually quicker than average, while Lance’s is a lot higher, showing how Lance actually can elevate this offense

Last week, the 49ers also had an EPA/dropback of 0.362 under Lance which is over 200% more than Jimmy G’s EPA/dropback. Also to note, Trey Lance had a higher DVOA was higher last game than Jimmy this season, which is another good metric to measure success. Albeit a small sample size, this big of a jump doesn’t just happen due to random variance, this is due to a seismic change at the helm of the offense. Trey Lance gives you a better chance to win than Jimmy Garoppolo, healthy or not, and the 49ers should be starting him through the playoffs no matter what.