49ers film room part 1: Breaking down Trey Lance's return to action - the bad

There's too much to unpack from Trey Lance's first game action since his 2022 week 2 injury so this will be a 2 part series looking at the bad and good.

Aug 17, 2023

**Author’s note:** In the videos in this article, I was messing around with different graphics to see what pops more visually so if some look more detailed than others, that’s why. Thank you for reading!

Sunday’s first preseason game for the 49ers showcased Trey Lance as the starting quarterback for the first half of the game. It was his first significant live game action since his season ending ankle injury in week 2 of last season.

As far as playing time for Lance, he’s still largely a rookie and often times throughout Sunday’s game, he looked like it. As such it was a mixed bag for the young 3rd year-in-name-only quarterback because it was quintessentially a Trey Lance game that started out rough but ended on a somewhat positive note until Jake Moody missed his first field goal of the game just before halftime.

Paper stats show that Lance had a very good game but he most certainly did not. The all-22 showed indecision, lack of confidence, and misses on throws he should be making in year 3 even with limited reps. He showed good accuracy on most of his throws but where he’s struggling right now is with concepts he’s always struggled with and he left several plays on the field against the Raiders.

His overall lack of experience at the position at all levels is the driving factor here. He can no doubt rifle a 30 yard rope with precision to beat zone coverage and he can escape the pocket and make plays on the run when he has to. But his lack of experience shows up within the basic structure of the passing offense when it comes time to pull the trigger and rip a pass to his primary or secondary reads.

He’s processing the field well and making the right decisions with his eyes going to where they should, but he’s not trusting what he sees right at the moment he has to throw and is second guessing his process. He often double clutches like he wants to throw but for some reason did not do it on a number plays.

In this game, Lance was 10-15, 112 yards passing, one touchdown, and no interceptions. He was sacked four times and had a passer rating of 111.0. The stats, as is the case so often, do not tell the whole story.

Which sacks was Trey Lance responsible for?

First sack

Initially after watching the all-22 after the game, I credited Lance with 3 of the four sacks he took. Shanahan came out in his Monday press conference and stated that he thought 2 of the 4 were on Lance. The important thing isn’t how many he was responsible for but what he was processing and what he was seeing when he was sacked. For numerical purposes, we’ll say 2.5.

“He came out, first play was tough. The corner just keyed his three-step drop and sat on it and he did the right thing. He reset to go to the tight end over the ball, but one of our eligibles busted on the play and put two guys in the same spot so he had to protect the ball and take a sack there.”

The first play of the game was a stick spacing concept the quarterback would typically read flat > stick > to over the ball > to back side short curl route. The curl route by Chris Conley here is also the alert route on the play.

The Raiders are in cover-3 and with no overhang defender to the single receiver side, the threat of the flat defender flying out to the curl route is minimal because the flat player is the safety rotating down pre-snap with eyes also on the running back if he flares out. Lance drops back and looks for Conley on the curl but the corner reads it and squats on it instead of bailing to his deep third responsibility.

Lance comes off of it, resets, and looks for a brief second at the stick from Bell. It’s very quick but I thought his head and eyes went there before he came back to the over the ball route. Shanahan said he thought he came back to Charlie Woerner on the over route first.

It’s not clear how the route progression here works after looking off of the alert and it seems counterintuitive to look all the way back across the field at the primary progressions. But he briefly did.

There was a bust by the running back here too. Instead of swinging out wide, he went straight up the gut and this put two eligible receivers in the same area and it seems this more on the running back, who actually ran the 7-man pass protection scheme rather than the jet protection in the play call.

I still think Lance could have probably fired a pass in there if he hadn’t peaked at Bell on the stick route but that tenth of a second put his decision-making in a tough spot with the running back in the same area. The defenders had not yet closed the middle of the field.

Either way, I lean more towards this being on the busted route by the running back but with Lance shouldering some of the responsibility here for wasting that movement to look at Bell if in fact what Shanahan said is correct about the next read being the over route by the tight end. Either way, Lance showed good processing and decision-making by identifying his alert versus the coverage and working back across until he was sacked.

Second sack

On the same drive, Lance ate another sack and this is one I credited to him as well. Again, this is another play that showed that he is processing the field right up until he has to throw it. Then he’s second guessing what he sees.

Shanahan stated: “Trey’s got to make that throw still to move the chains.”

He emphasized that tight end Ross Dwelley didn’t make it easy on him because Dwelley kind of drifted off his route when he should have sat in the zone.

The play call is a Y cross concept with the primary read being the stick route by Dwelley on the front side of the call and the slot seam/thru route on the backside of the call being the second read. Outside of Dwelley, the alert go route is an option versus cloud coverage.

Lance drops back to pass and should throw as soon as he plants that back foot but he pulled it down again. You can see Dwelley drift into the corner and maybe Lance was spooked by that but he has to make that throw. Lead Dwelley back inside. Or peak the corner technique and throw the cover-2 hole shot to the go route there down the sideline. Either way, the processing wasn’t great here. Said Shanahan, “Trey still should have made it.”

Play action sack and missed opportunities

These plays are going to go out of order because the last sack to look at also crosses over into this next section on his play action misses. But late in the 2nd quarter, Lance was sacked behind the line of scrimmage while trying to escape the pocket because he didn’t throw to a deep out route at the top of his drop like he should have.

The play call is a play action deep dig and deep out concept. The deep out is coming from the left side and and the deeper dig route is run from right to left across the middle of the field.

The Raiders are in cover-3 and bite toward the play action. Lance never progressed backside to the dig route because he missed his window to throw to the deep out route on the left sideline. The window is there but it takes throwing with anticipation here, a throw he can easily make with his arm strength. He hesitates and feels the free rusher so he pulls it down and tries to escape the pocket but ends up getting chased down anyways.

His indecisiveness cost him an explosive pass play and a chance to earn some equity on the depth chart. But there were also two previous play action passes that he also missed his throwing windows on and it’s not at all clear why except that maybe it wasn’t exactly as he had repped this play out in practice and didn’t feel the windows were really there. But this is the time to make those throws and see what you’re capable of.

On the second play of the game, Lance was tasked with executing a drop back play action pass call “read.” It’s a concept he’s struggled with since entering the NFL and this was no different.

The concept is a mirrored deep curl concept at the 20 yard range where the receiver on the left has the option to sit at 20 yards or take off downfield depending on where the safety is.

Again, this is where experience matters and trusting what you see to let rip matters. Lance has predetermined the side. No issue processing there. The second his back foot hits at the top of his drop, that ball should be thrown. The defender’s back is turned and he is racing to get back to cover. The corner’s momentum is taking him away as the receiver works down his stem at the top of his route.

Lance should place that ball down the route stem away from the cornerback. He has a window and he has time. Instead, he throws the check-down for a minimal gain. Even if he doesn’t like that throw, the other “read” route is wide open 12 yards behind the linebackers and Lance as the arm talent to layer it over them once their backs are turned.

The linebackers have no choice but to ROBOT and turn their backs to get to their zone assignments because of the depth of the routes. This was another missed opportunity.

There was another missed opportunity in the play action pass game later in the first quarter on the “drift” concept, a bread an butter day 1 install play and probably the most commonly called non keeper play action passing concept in the Shanahan offense.

I’ve written extensively about “drift” at the links below (for some reason Substack is not letting me hyperlink).

The basic idea behind the concept is to throw against the middle of the field closed (single high safety) or run the ball against “middle of the field open” (two deep safeties). The quarterback’s pre-snap indicator is to check for that safety alignment and get to the right play or stay with the first play called in the huddle.

The safeties rotate to two-deep coverage just before the snap but that doesn’t matter here. Lance’s first read, Conley on the drift route, is open in the window, especially with the linebacker’s back turned and ROBOTING again to find the crosser. Lance didn’t like the window. Not a big deal. Conley comes open in the second window. But he still didn’t throw it. Instead, he airmailed the check-down on the sideline and out of bounds.

This is probably the most concerning play in his arsenal of misses because this is a concept EVERY quarterback under Shanahan masters on day 1 of the install every offseason and training camp and Lance has had numerous reps running this against various coverages.

Dropped interceptions

I’m not going to break down his dropped interception in the end zone that turned into a touchdown. Kyle Shanahan said he didn’t really have a problem with the throw and I think there were other issues with the play, primarily that I think Conley was too deep in the end zone on a route he needed to be at about the 12 yard range on, which would’ve put him closer to the throw than he was and may the defender doesn’t slide across to nearly intercept it.

On his second dropped interception, it was a case of the quarterback not progressing through his reads and reading the field well combined with thinking he could fit a pass into an incredibly tight window. Not sure many quarterbacks could thread this that far downfield just based on the compressed space.

The play progression goes from his left to right with the deep out route, the sit route over the middle, and the 7-stop or “swirl” route on the right.

The defense is playing nickel/sub Tampa-2 with the nickel/star aligned to the pass strength, the three receiver side, giving them a 4 defenders over three receivers. Right away, Lance should be eliminating this side based on that and working over to his right, using his eyes to hold defenders.

The weak hook zone dropper on the right hash has to keep his landmark tight to the hash since there is no #2 receiver to that side and the running back releases to the flat. This opens a window for the swirl route behind the corner and in front of the safety but Lance never makes it there and instead tried to fit a pass nearly into triple coverage.

The weak hook zone dropper is hard-reading the quarterback’s eyes since there’s no threat in the seam from another receiver and drives on the pass as soon as Lance winds up his throw.

In part 2, we’ll look at what he did well plus how do we make sense of all of what we’ve seen.

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