Just when the 49ers' season was headed in the wrong direction, coach Kyle Shanahan almost made a move that would have sent shockwaves throughout the organization.
By selecting quarterback Trey Lance with the No. 3 overall pick in the 2021 NFL Draft, the 49ers made it clear that the 21-year-old will eventually take over as the team's signal-caller.
Once veteran Jimmy Garoppolo began the season under center, the narratives surrounding the quarterback competition died down until a lowly 3-5 start re-ignited the debate as to whether the 49ers should make the switch to the rookie.
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Two days after San Francisco's heartbreaking loss to the Los Angeles Rams in the NFC Championship Game at SoFi Stadium on Sunday, Shanahan met with local media on Tuesday afternoon, where he praised his prized rookie QB, providing reassurance that Lance has proven to be who the 49ers thought he was.
"He's kind of the baby on the team this year, just in terms of his age, but he has a presence to him that people will gravitate to when he has that position," Shanahan said of Lance on Tuesday. "Stuff I thought he learned the most of was this was his first time playing in almost two years. And we asked him to do a lot of different things and just watching him play in the pocket, watching him work on play actions that he didn't get to do as much in college. He had never done a seven-step drop before, which is how a lot of play actions are."
After starting the season 2-1, San Francisco went on to lose four of their next five games as any hope of contending for a title appeared bleak. At that point, Shanahan actually thought of making the switch to Lance, as he admitted to on Tuesday.
"But yeah, towards the end of the year, I never thought about just trying to get him in because I knew that was about to come," Shanahan added. "When we were 3-5, that was kind of the breaking point where I knew it was getting close. I know everyone else thought it was there, which I agreed it was getting close to there, but once we won that game and went to 4-5 and ended up winning four in a row, I thought we had a chance.
"And when you're doing that, you don't want to mess with the team. I would've done it for strategic reasons, if I thought it helped, but I wasn't going to do it just to help Trey get 4-6 plays and ease him in at that time, because that's not what we were thinking about at that time. We were thinking about how we can get our team to the playoffs. And once we got to the playoffs, we were thinking how we could win each game, because we knew only one team was going to be happy at the end. And we're not that happy.”
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As exciting as Lance's potential in the NFL is, the 49ers were in win-now mode, something a veteran quarterback such as Garoppolo was better-suited for.
After squeaking into the playoffs, the 49ers went on to beat both the Dallas Cowboys and Green Bay Packers on the road, led by an injured Garoppolo, who showed plenty of veteran leadership and grit throughout the second half of the season and deep into the playoffs.