With just two days remaining before the 49ers’ season opener, head coach Kyle Shanahan joined Murph & Mac to discuss all things Niners.
As usual, that starts with the team’s 22-year-old quarterback, Trey Lance.
Until he proves himself, the questions over Lance will persist, and after bringing back Jimmy Garoppolo, they only increased.
Asked if the 49ers are truly committed to Lance after bringing back Garoppolo, Shanahan sounded borderline exasperated.
“Guys, this is Trey’s first year starting for us,” Shanahan said. “We were letting go a $24 million starting quarterback to do that. We got him back for a backup price.
I don’t think that has to do with not having faith in your starter.
That never would have happened if it just didn’t come to fruition there. We were very fortunate that happened. So we obviously were willing to go a different direction and we ended up having something fall into our lap.”
Then there’s the captaincy vote.
Lance was not voted a captain, but Shanahan said Wednesday that he was seventh in the voting, while Deebo Samuel was eighth.
While the 49ers carried seven captains in the two prior seasons, they elected not to this year. Shanahan said he’s been confounded by the criticism over not making Lance a captain behind Nick Bosa, Arik Armstead, George Kittle, Jimmie Ward, Trent Williams and Fred Warner.
“And the whole captain vote [criticism] is kind of a joke to me,” Shanahan said. “Bosa finally got enough votes to get up to No. 6, and look at those six people in front of Trey. I think they were all pretty worthy of that vote and just to give it to a guy in his first year just because he’s a quarterback, the only reason we would have done that is to avoid questions in articles. And that’s really not what we do. We tried to do what the team votes for.
If I would have guessed the votes, I would have guessed he would have been right where he was at so I got really no problem with it at all.”
Of all the things to split hairs about, captaincy is a decidedly trivial one, especially for a quarterback on a playoff-caliber roster who is essentially a rookie.
Catch Murph & Mac weekdays from 6 a.m. – 10 a.m. on KNBR 104.5 / 680 and streaming live on KNBR.com.
