San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Helping Lance: Win not required, but it would smooth QB’s path
The term is overused, abused and typically leaves me unenthused.
No, I’m not a big fan of referring to games as mustwin, especially those that take place in NFL stadiums when it’s still technically summer.
There are times when that depiction is warranted: World War II. The Russian roulette scenes in “The Deer Hunter.” The Bolinas-Stinson Fourth of July Tug-O-War. All of those qualify as must-wins, especially if the sharks get involved. The San Francisco 49ers’ Week 2 home opener against the Seahawks on Sunday at Levi’s Stadium? Not so much. And yet …
The Niners are coming off a clunker of an opener, a 19-10 defeat to the Chicago Bears at rain-soaked Soldier Field. Their highly scrutinized second-year quarterback, Trey Lance, performed poorly with the game on the line, albeit in adverse conditions.
Now, once again, the 49ers are big favorites against a team perceived as an NFL bottom-feeder, the Seahawks’ dramatic victory last Monday night against the Broncos and former Seattle quarterback Russell Wilson notwithstanding.
And, oh yeah, Jimmy Garoppolo — the quarterback who’s 35-16 as a 49ers starter, including a Super Bowl appearance and January’s NFC Championship Game — is chilling on the sideline as Lance’s backup.
If the 49ers lose to the Seahawks on Sunday and Lance is unimpressive, coach Kyle Shanahan and his players will have every rational reason not to freak out. With 15 games left in the regular season and the memory of last year’s stirring rally from a 3-5 start fresh in their minds, the 49ers can legitimately claim that there’s plenty of time for a turnaround as Lance grows into his role.
On the inside, there may no cause for panic. On the outside? Well, a loss to the Seahawks — absent a strong showing by Lance — will ratchet up the noise to Metallica-at-the-Fillmore levels.
That may not be fair to Lance, who is only 22 and is about to make his fourth NFL start. And locally, most journalists who cover the Niners are likely to report and weigh in with a suitable amount of perspective.
Nationally, that’s not happening. If things go bad for the Niners and their QB on Sunday, get ready for a barrage of “Should Trey Lance Be Benched for Jimmy G?” segments in the days to follow.
Trust me, I know how this works. I’ve been covering the NFL on a national level since 1994, and from 2013-21 I worked for the league-owned network that craves convenient and simply stated story lines on a constant basis. Most producers and programmers — I’m talking about the overall contentproducing landscape, and not just NFL Network — aren’t that nuanced or creative. And many of the people discussing these topics are happy to be “strong and wrong” at the expense of advocating for patience and restraint. Quarterback controversies, perceived or otherwise, are a gift from Santa — and Monday will be Christmas morning if San Francisco is 0-2 and Lance is struggling.
Now, noise alone is not ruinous, and Shanahan and others will tell you they block it out and focus “only on what’s in this locker room.” That’s the right approach, but it isn’t as smoothly executed as it sounds. As general manager John Lynch told reporters in a news conference shortly after reducing the roster to 53 players, he and Shanahan called in a sizable collection of veteran leaders to fill them in on the plan to bring back Garoppolo and solicit their support.
Clearly, they’re concerned that large doses of drama could present a distraction for Lance and his teammates. And NFL coaches abhor distractions the way golfers hate people talking during their backswing.
Already, former NFL head coaches Sean Payton and Mike Martz have pumped up the volume.
If the 49ers crave a respite, for Lance’s sake and for their own collective psyche, all they have to do is defeat a Seahawks team that has beaten them eight of 10 times since Shanahan was hired in 2017 — with one of those Niners victories, the NFC West-title decider in 2019, having been secured by less than a foot.
The hero of that game, linebacker Dre Greenlaw, told me he wasn’t surprised by the Seahawks’ passionate performance against Wilson and the Broncos on Monday.
“I knew they were gonna come out with some aggression,” he said. “They looked good on defense. I was more impressed by (quarterback) Geno Smith, how he was able to manage it. He used his legs when he needed to, and he was just poised. It was like, ‘Hey, they’ve got a little quarterback there.’ ”
After the game, Smith, a 2013 Jets second-round pick who lasted just two seasons as a starter and was Wilson’s backup in Seattle from 201921, amusingly told ESPN’s Lisa Salters, “They wrote me off. I ain’t write back, though.”
Greenlaw, mindful that the Seahawks insisted on receiving quarterback Drew Lock from the Broncos as part of the Wilson trade, smiled when asked about Smith’s comment.
“I wonder who he was talking to,” Greenlaw said. “Was he talking to his team? Because his own team tried to write him off.”
That likely won’t happen to Lance after two games, no matter how Sunday plays out, but a lousy outing would make his job feel that much more daunting. The locker room may have his back, but as Hall of Famer Steve Young framed it for me recently, once there’s any crack in that support “it can all devolve quickly.”
Lance can avoid that eventuality, or at least stave it off, by playing better Sunday. And the rest of the Niners can do him a solid by ensuring that they come away with a W.
To be clear, I’m not suggesting that they must win. I’m just saying it would be a really, really good idea.