Kyle Shanahan Reveals the Offseason Plan for Trey Lance's Development
The offseason is in full swing for the San Francisco 49ers.
And one of the top priorities this offseason is the development of Trey Lance.
Kyle Shanahan today at his exit press conference revealed what the offseason plan is for Lance's development.
"So Trey's going to take a couple weeks off," said Shanahan. "And then he's going to go down to Southern California and work with some guys throwing the ball, isolate on that, just his throwing motion, working on that all the time, which I'd say 80-percent of the quarterbacks in this league do that.
"It'll be real good for Trey to kind of get away from us and just focus on those things. And we'll be in touch through the whole thing and we'll get him back here and start talking X's and O's and scheme and footwork, just preparing him hopefully to have a good phase one, two and three of OTAs.
"It'll be real good for Trey to kind of get away from us and just focus on those things. And we'll be in touch through the whole thing and we'll get him back here and start talking X's and O's and scheme and footwork, just preparing him hopefully to have a good phase one, two and three of OTAs.”
2021 was a learning season for Lance, but one thing he couldn't learn or work on was his mechanics. Improving in that department always stems from offseason work. It is not like the coaches were really working with Lance to get him better. He was too preoccupied acting as the scout team quarterback for the vast majority of the season.
So Lance is going to really need to dig his feet in and grind to get any dramatic results with his mechanics, especially his throwing motion. A "loopy release" tends to be the best way to describe how Lance cocks back his arm to throw. Getting that cleaned up can definitely improve his efficiency as a passer. The longer it takes to get the ball out of your hand from winding back, the better a defense has to react to it.
Throwing release isn't all Lance needs to improve on as Shanahan also cited footwork and processing with "scheme." That is a lot of ground to cover for Lance in a three months span before OTAs, but this is why the 49ers wanted to sit him a season so he could be better prepared for a leap in 2022.
We'll see how it works out as the year plays out.
