Should Trey Lance be starting for the 49ers? | Yahoo Fantasy Football Forecast

With the 49ers sitting in the basement of the NFC West at 3-5, Yahoo Sports' Scott Pianowski and Andy Behrens debate whether or not Kyle Shanahan should slot Trey Lance in as their starting QB.

Video Transcript

ANDY BEHRENS: The guy I really want to talk about here is Trey Lance and this is where we can have our Shanahan conversation. Right? If not-- if not now, when? I guess is my question on Trey Lance.

I look at the back half of his schedule, I look at, you know, they've got the Rams coming up, and obviously that's bad, and that's probably-- It's probably a bad spot to throw Lance into, the Rams coming off a loss. It's a fierce defensive front and all that. If we look past that to week 11, this is what he faces rest of season, at least for the fantasy season.

He would get Jacksonville, Minnesota, Seattle, Cincinnati, Atlanta, Tennessee and Houston. And there's really not a-- There's certainly not a stay away match up there. Obviously, Tennessee has been much better than we expected them to be, but are we scared of the Jaguars defense?

Are we scared of the Vikings? Seattle? No, we're not scared of any of that. So it's as friendly a slate as he can possibly get.

I think he's in that situation where, like, the second Rams game is in week 18, so there's no fantasy implications there, right? That's always nice. Are we going to see Trey Lance? Because this is a little bit mind blowing to me.

The team is 3-5, the division is gone. There's no hope of winning a division. There's barely any hope of making the playoffs. They are certainly not on a Super Bowl trajectory, right? So what are we waiting for?

SCOTT PIANOWSKI: I don't share the same optimism for Lance that you do for a couple of different reasons. For one thing, I know, the Niners have three wins, so that's a problem. But right now the 4-4 Falcons would be the NFC's number seven seed. The NFC is very top heavy, but there's going to be a mediocre team that sneaks into the playoffs, this expanded playoffs.

And yeah, sure, they're going to probably get-- Whoever that team is probably get waxed in the first round, but I think San Francisco is too involved in this playoff thing. They still think they belong in the playoffs, that they're going to play who they think gives them the best chance to win.

Because Lance is so young, because he played so little last year, because he's been so ineffective when asked to play this year. And here's the thing with Garoppolo, and look, I'm far from a Jimmy Garoppolo apologist. A couple of years ago, I was calling him the most overrated player in football.

He's thrown for over 300 yards, two straight weeks, he averaged 11 or so yards attempt at Chicago. Yes, he took a handful of sacks in the Arizona Game. There are also other reasons why they didn't score.

They had a fumble by Aiyuk, they missed a couple of field goals. They littered the field with yards in point. They should have scored a lot more than the 17. The game should have been more competitive than it was.

They just got Kittle back, they finally gotten some-- even though Aiyuk did fumble, they finally started to get some production on him. Deebo Samuel's been terrific all year. I don't think they view Garoppolo as the problem here and I think they might just think it's just a wipe out year for Lance, that they're not going to go to him and develop and evaluate him until the season is completely written off.

And when they're only like a game or game and a half out of the playoff hunt, I don't think they're going to view it that way. So I don't think-- I think Lance is too much of-- there's too much developing left to go in this photo. I think he may play eventually at the end of the year when they're out of the playoff hunt, maybe a December thing. I don't think he plays this month at all, and I'm not going to wait on him in any-- even super flex leagues, I'm not going to wait on him.

ANDY BEHRENS: Well, my optimism on Lance is that when he did get a start, he ran the ball 16 times, right?

SCOTT PIANOWSKI: Yep, we like that.

ANDY BEHRENS: I think-- Yeah, I mean, that just almost never happens. And you and I talked about it at the time, the list of players who've done that more than once is like Bobby Douglas and Lamar Jackson, and I don't know if it's anybody else, maybe Jalen Hurts? I don't know, it's not a lot of guys.

We just don't see quarterbacks running the ball 15, 16 times. It is not a thing that happens. And I mean, I just find it surprising that you would trade, what was it? Three firsts, a third, use the number three overall pick on a guy that you're just going to totally red shirt.

It surprises me. It is not what normally happens to quarterbacks who get taken that high. You're probably right, Garoppolo almost certainly gives them a somewhat better chance to win in any moment. You've just got to wait the development of Trey Lance and I am definitely someone who thinks that playing in actual, regular season games with-- You know, against defenses that are game planning to you and with, you know, varsity caliber receivers, like, I think that has a lot of value.

I think that-- I think I would be at the point in San Francisco, and of course Shanahan can't think this way, he's got to think about winning this week's game all the time, but I would certainly be at the point where I would think that the development of Trey Lance should not be put on hold so that we could chase you know the backing into the postseason. Again, I don't expect a coach to think that way ever.

SCOTT PIANOWSKI: You make a plausible case, but of course, we need-- Do the 49ers see it that way? I do agree, I think that there's something to be said for maybe not throwing Trey Lance into the fire week one, week two, week three. Let him get his feel around the facility, what it's like to be a pro, trying to get the speed of the game, whatever.

Whatever there's been gained from him-- them soft introducing him, soft revealing him, I think that's gone now. I think at this point, if you're going to develop him, just let's find a moment and make the handoff. I just think they're going to cling to that hope of the number seven seed and they're going to say, you know what?

Garoppolo didn't make explosive plays the last couple of weeks. We got Kittle back, we got him over 100 yards. Deebo's been terrific. Aiyuk's finally starting to be the player they thought.

I think they're going to talk themselves into that the passing game really isn't the problem, we just get to fine tune a couple of things. We're finally getting the backfield healthy and the version of the backfield that we want to the point that Wilson didn't even play. So I have a feeling they're going to talk themselves into, this really isn't broken. We looked really good two weeks ago.

We shot ourselves in the foot against Arizona. And missed a great opportunity, right? Kyler wasn't playing, Hopkins wasn't playing, Evans got hurt right away. You just get dump trumped-- dump trucked by James Conner. Congratulations.