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Will Trey Lance be a Top 10 Quarterback Statistically in 2022?

Yes, for a few reasons.
Grant Cohn|
Will Trey Lance be a Top 10 Quarterback Statistically in 2022?
Will Trey Lance be a Top 10 Quarterback Statistically in 2022?

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San Francisco 49ers

Lots of people who don't follow the 49ers closely seem to expect Trey Lance to fall on his face and get benched this season, like he's the next C.J. Beathard.

I've watched Lance practice a great deal since the 49ers drafted him last year, and I can tell you with certainty he's better than Beathard. He's better than Garoppolo, too. That's why the 49ers traded for Lance, and that's why Lance is the starter and Garoppolo is the backup.

Most people would agree that Garoppolo is roughly the 25th-best quarterback in the NFL. No higher than that. Maybe lower when you factor in his injury history. And yet, last season he ranked 13th in QBR.

That doesn't mean Garoppolo was the 13th-best quarterback in the NFL last season -- he wasn't. This just goes to show how good the 49ers' offensive weapons are, and how well 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan masked Garoppolo's weaknesses and featured his strengths.

If Shanahan, Deebo Samuel, George Kittle, Brandon Aiyuk, Kyle Juszczyk, Elijah Mitchell and Trent Williams can make the 25th-best quarterback have the 13th-best season statistically relative to his peers, how good can the 49ers make Lance look? Can he finish top 10 in QBR this upcoming season?

Yes, for a few reasons.

QBR takes rushing into account, and Lance runs much more than Garoppolo. Plus, Lance most likely will score more touchdowns and take fewer sacks than Garoppolo. If Lance can commit fewer turnovers than Garoppolo as well, he should be a lock to finish top 10 in QBR, considering all he has around him.

Now he just has to do it.

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Grant Cohn
GRANT COHN

Grant Cohn has covered the San Francisco 49ers daily since 2011. He spent the first nine years of his career with the Santa Rosa Press Democrat where he wrote the Inside the 49ers blog and covered famous coaches and athletes such as Jim Harbaugh, Colin Kaepernick and Patrick Willis. In 2012, Inside the 49ers won Sports Blog of the Year from the Peninsula Press Club. In 2020, Cohn joined FanNation and began writing All49ers. In addition, he created a YouTube channel which has become the go-to place on YouTube to consume 49ers content. Cohn's channel typically generates roughly 3.5 million viewers per month, while the 49ers' official YouTube channel generates roughly 1.5 million viewers per month. Cohn live streams almost every day and posts videos hourly during the football season. Cohn is committed to asking the questions that 49ers fans want answered, and providing the most honest and interactive coverage in the country. His loyalty is to the reader and the viewer, not the team or any player or coach. Cohn is a new-age multimedia journalist with an old-school mentality, because his father is Lowell Cohn, the legendary sports columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle from 1979 to 1993. The two have a live podcast every Tuesday. Grant Cohn grew up in Oakland and studied English Literature at UCLA from 2006 to 2010. He currently lives in Oakland with his wife.

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