Trey Lance struggled in the San Francisco 49ers’ preseason finale against the Houston Texans on Thursday night, finishing with a 17-0 loss. 49ers’ head coach Kyle Shanahan was not amused by the outcome, claiming that his team’s gameplay was “pretty rough.”
Shanahan said just after the Thursday night game that the squad was reportedly struggling, and he said the team “didn’t play clean.”
“Didn’t play clean at all. I think we struggled to stop the run on that first drive, which was tough,” Shanahan said. “When we did play good defense, I thought we had a couple bad penalties, kept them on the field.
Offensively, just way too many penalties. I think offense especially, but it was also defense and special teams. And then I just thought we struggled to execute. I thought it was pretty sloppy play, and I wish it could have been cleaner.”
Lance only completed 7 of 11 throws with a passer rating of 73.7 in that game, while not scoring any touchdowns or interceptions. It’s also a far cry from Lance’s performance against the Green Bay Packers in Week 1 of the preseason when he had the highest passer rating of 158.3 while completing four of five passes and scoring one touchdown.
Lessons from the loss
When questioned about Lance, Shanahan expressed his initial intention to play “cleaner,” although he said that he would not “make too much of it.”
“I wish it was cleaner just from a whole, but I’m not going to make too much of it,” Shanahan said. “We wanted him to get just two drives. I ended up giving him three because I wanted to give him a little bit more there, but there weren’t too many opportunities, and we got into some long down distances, which made it tough.”
Meanwhile, Lance said in a statement following the defeat to the Texans that it wasn’t their “best night” and that he would learn from the loss.
“It never feels good to lose, but we will learn from it and turn the page. We’re not going to make a bigger deal out of it than we need to for sure. Yeah, like I said, it never feels good to lose.”
“There was some ugly stuff out there for sure. Man, it definitely wasn’t our best night, but like I said, we’re not going to make too big of a deal out of it. We’ll watch the tape tomorrow, learn from it and get better,” Lance concluded.
Lance’s career over the years
Lance came to the 49ers as emerging talent from North Dakota State, a Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) school. He only started one full season in 2019, although he completed nearly two-thirds of his throws for nearly 3,000 yards.
Lance played one game in 2020 owing to the FCS season being postponed due to COVID-19. He signed with the 49ers in 2021 and appeared in only two games last season.
It has been reported that Lance sustained a finger injury while playing for the 49ers in his rookie year. The right index finger injury that Lance sustained, according to the 49ers coach, “didn’t totally heal right” and prevented him from being able to bend it.
According to the 49ers’ general manager, however, Lance managed to pull through despite the injury. “I was blown away with the way he handled that, finding a way to get out there and get better every day.”