Trey Lance must be the 49ers ride or die even with Jimmy G lurking in the background | You Pod to Win the Game

Yahoo Sports’ Charles Robinson and Frank Schwab discuss the 49ers soap opera at the quarterback position. Trey Lance is the starter and supplanted starter Jimmy Garoppolo is now listed as 4th string. Charles explains why Jimmy G can never regain the starting spot for the Trey Lance era to work. Meanwhile, Frank is expecting big thinks from Lance. Hear the full conversation on the You Pod to Win the Game podcast. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher or wherever you listen.

Video transcript

CHARLES ROBINSON: We talked a little bit about, should there be some teams that are worried with what we're seeing early on in the preseason? And although they're not on our list, I'm going to start off with the 49ers, only because I've tweeted about this already with Trey Lance. You're kind of getting these updates, where it's like, every time Trey Lance has a practice, where he struggles, you know it pretty quickly. It gets out there like, oh, he's not the most accurate guy today, and da, da, da, and all this stuff.

But I'm going to tell you that, in fantasyland, if they suddenly decided they're going to bring Jimmy back to practice and elevate him from the fourth quarterback, it is over for Trey Lance this season. He could be awful in the preseason. To me, it does not matter. You have to go through this with him. Whatever that means, however much of a struggle it may be or whatever, too bad, like this is it.

You've made the push. You put the assets in. You had the off season you did. You put Jimmy into a position, where he's out the door. You can't do any more than demote the guy to fourth string quarterback and not have him out there, so this is it.

FRANK SCHWAB: But don't you think, at some point, Kyle gets the edge? Let's say, Trey Lance has had some good days, too, like that's been tweeted about as well. But let's say, bad pre-season, it keeps going on, however long it goes. You're telling me that Kyle Shanahan, who I can't remember the exact record he has, or Jimmy Garoppolo as a starting quarterback, you can't tell me, Kyle Shanahan doesn't have some itch of we've won with this guy. What are we doing?

CHARLES ROBINSON: I think it's, for sure. But I don't think this is one of those rare circumstances, where I'm like, I don't care in terms of Kyle's ego, or whether he's going to be aggressive, or this is just one of those scenarios, where I don't think he can afford it. I truly believe that.

I don't think Kyle Shanahan and John Lynch can't afford not going through the brick wall with Trey Lance, and everybody getting bloodied up, and it is what it is. And I'm not even going to say the guy is having-- I want to make this a very clear point, OK? I'm not saying Trey Lance is having a bad camp, or there's a bad preseason happening here. I think it's inconsistent, and I think the point I made on Twitter was let's just all remember, people freaked out about Ja'Marr Chase last year.

FRANK SCHWAB: Right.

CHARLES ROBINSON: It is what it is. I just think, in that situation, it doesn't matter. What you've committed--

FRANK SCHWAB: You're in. You're all in.

CHARLES ROBINSON: --you are pot committed.

FRANK SCHWAB: They were all in the second they made that trade.

CHARLES ROBINSON: Right.

FRANK SCHWAB: You can't--

CHARLES ROBINSON: But they gave themselves--

FRANK SCHWAB: You can't trade that much and get the third pick.

CHARLES ROBINSON: And what did they do? They burned the year that they had, because you're like, OK, look, even when they did it, they had a burn year, you know? Then they did it. They burned the burn year with Jimmy. That's gone. There's no more burn year left there.

FRANK SCHWAB: No, this is it, yeah.

CHARLES ROBINSON: This is it.

FRANK SCHWAB: And, by the way, I'll go on the record saying, I think Trey Lance is going to be fantastic this year. I really do.

CHARLES ROBINSON: OK.

FRANK SCHWAB: I just believe in the kid's talent. Everybody talks about last year, and it's like, the one game against the Cardinals, he had a terrible game plan. We talked about that. It was just figure it out and run. It was not a good game plan. I think Kyle would admit that.

The game against the Texans, he was good in that game, and I get it. It's the Houston Texans, whatever. He looked good in that game, threw those 86 passes. You've seen enough to be like, yeah, I could see that there's some dude in him, and he could be really, really good. And I think he'll be just fine in that offense.