With Trey Lance gone from San Francisco, the 49ers have three quarterbacks on the roster. As of Tuesday at 4:00 p.m. ET, how many will they keep?
It’s unclear at this point whether the depth chart will consist of only Brock Purdy and Sam Darnold, or whether Brandon Allen will remain on the team.
Coach Kyle Shanahan has said he would have kept Trey Lance as QB3 if Lance had wanted to stay. Which means that Shanahan was prepared to keep a third quarterback.
Allen becomes intriguing because, if he sticks on the 53-man roster, it’s possible that Lance had actually fallen to QB4 and that the 49ers would have cut Lance if they couldn’t have traded him. Obviously, Shanahan couldn’t have been quite that candid, or the 49ers never would have gotten anything close to a fourth-round pick for Lance.
Then there’s the third quarterback rule, inspired by the 49ers’ experience in the NFC Championship. To dress an extra player as a quarterback on game day, he must be on the 53-man roster. If the 49ers carry only two quarterbacks, they can’t have an emergency quarterback.
For most teams, it’s a simple gamble. Keep on the 53-man roster someone who plays a different position, betting rarely if ever will two quarterbacks be injured in the same game. Besides, if that ever happens, they’re probably screwed anyway.
Given the rarity of two quarterbacks being injured in the same game and given that it happened to the 49ers in their most recent game of significance, they actually might be tempted to think lightning won’t strike so quickly again. But if it does, and if they end up with no quarterbacks after Purdy and Darnold get injured in the same game, they’ll never hear the end of it.
Really, the 49ers are the one team that can’t make the no-third-quarterback wager, no matter how safe it might be to trust that two won’t get injured in one game. They’re the reason for the new rule. If they don’t take advantage of it and end up in the same place they were against the Eagles in January, that will be even harder to explain than their misadventures with Trey Lance.
