And so the Trey Lance era has arrived for the Niners
The heralded Trey Lance era apparently has arrived. Anybody want to search for it among the frustration and disappointment of his first game as the 49ers’ designated savior?
What happened on Sunday was not entirely his fault, San Francisco squandering a 10-0 lead and getting stunned by the Chicago Bears, 19-10.
The defense became defenseless, and the Niners were called for 12 penalties, a number unacceptable for any team not named the Raiders. But the judgment of a QB is made from the final score.
Did he bring his team home a winner, in this game played in an occasional downpour and on a constantly sloppy surface at Soldier Field in Chicago? Lance did not.
The Niners had become the fashionable choice to make the Super Bowl, from all those folks at ESPN to hyper-critical Boomer Esiason. But when the curtain went up, they looked, well, terrible wouldn’t be an inappropriate description.
Kyle Shanahan, the Niners coach, tossed out phrases such as “stupid penalties” and “silly mistakes,” not needing to wait until the videos to tell us what he really thought.
The Niners and Lance, the quarterback who was the third overall pick in the 2021 draft, are hot stuff and the game was shown in many locations.
And while it’s only one game among the 17 on every NFL team’s season schedule, and while even the Super Bowl champ Los Angeles Rams were defeated in their opener, this wasn’t exactly the way to make an impression — for Lance or for the franchise.
“We all know what happened,” said Lance, in his postgame comments, “and we need to fix it.”
What happened was the 49ers had 331 net yards rushing and passing to 204 for the Bears, but botched up everything by holding or doing whatever else that an official would deem against the rules.
The league this season went from four preseason games to three. Perhaps the Niners needed that fourth practice game to learn what was proper and what wasn’t. Or how to fool the refs.
Compared to their dozen penalties for 99 yards, just one short of a football field, the Bears had only three for 24 yards.
“It’s hard enough to play against the opposing team,” left tackle Trent Williams said. “It’s even harder when you play against yourself.”
The Bears were seven-point underdogs in what would be labeled Chicago weather. Early on, they punted five times and quarterback Justin Fields threw an interception. but they won because the 49ers kept screwing up.
“We killed ourselves,” linebacker Fred Warner said. “Every single one of those drives, you can look back and see we did something to help them get in the end zone.”
“We were stopping the run,” said defensive end Nick Bosa, “but we fell apart on penalties.” Asked about Lance, Bosa said, “I was encouraged by the way he played. With that rain, it was hard to throw the ball.”
Shanahan said the field conditions factored into how he used Lance.
“I’ll go back and watch the tape and I’ll ask him how he felt,” Shanahan said. “But it was that type of game.”
Not the type the Niners could have wanted.