SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Trey Lance caught a football, flipped to him from across the room inside Levi’s Stadium, and he worked a grip on it to try to relive how he had to hold it a little more than a year ago just to have a prayer of throwing it. His index finger was almost to the nose of the ball, his middle finger off the laces and his ring finger sitting over and between the first and second cross-laces.
It’s not how anyone would tell a quarterback to do it. But Lance had no choice.
Even more remarkable? He didn’t have much to say about it back then, either—really to anyone. So as his rookie year went up and down, as it looked like his cannon of a right arm might be wearing out, as it might’ve seemed to some like he was shot-putting the ball in games, Lance knew what was wrong. He had a broken finger, with damaged ligaments, and even if excuses would’ve saved him some criticism and grief, he wasn’t about to make any.
“I chipped the bone in my pointer finger, so I had to wait on it. It was super swollen, couldn’t really bend it or straighten it,” he said, as he flexed it over the ball. “It [happened] at the Raiders [preseason] game. We had a bye week after the Raiders game, I had a splint on just to try to get it back straight. So it chipped, it kind of stayed bent like this and we just had to keep working. I wore a little brace that kind of … it pushed down on my knuckle and up on both sides of my finger. I just kept wearing it and stretching it as much as I could, scraping it and just trying to get all the scar tissue out of there.”
As Lance was explaining it, he curled his index finger and held it in place, illustrating how hard it was to summon any strength in it and showing how, at the time, he was really trying to throw with four fingers. Add that to the learning curve he faced coming from North Dakota State, with just 17 college starts on his résumé, and then how hope the finger would straighten out in-season evaporated, and your perception of Lance might change.
No, Lance’s rookie year didn’t go as planned. And sure, there were moments of doubt in some corners of San Francisco. But the full picture wasn’t out there for public consumption, either—which was by the quarterback’s own choice—or even for almost any of the people he was working with day to day.
“I was blown away with the way he handled that, finding a way to get out there and get better every day,” said 49ers GM John Lynch. “And it was hard because of that finger, and it wasn’t always pretty. That’s the finger you throw a football with, and he didn’t have that. It was compromised. It led to some bad habits. But he still found a way to get better, to support Jimmy [Garoppolo], to be a great teammate and earn the respect of our guys.”
Six months later, on an August Saturday, Lance is the one taking first-team reps, with Garoppolo on a side field throwing and waiting for the Niners to find him a new home. That, of course, was expected, from the moment the team took Lance No. 3 in the draft 16 months ago.
But his road here? It had a lot more twists, and potholes, than most people know.
