Trey Lance will start at QB for San Francisco 49ers 'sooner than later,' coach Kyle Shanahan says

PALM BEACH. Fla. — With the NFL season still roughly six months away, San Francisco 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan isn't ready to announce his starting quarterback. In fact, much like last season, he might never make a formal announcement.

But, if it wasn't already clear that Shanahan and the Niners intend to turn the keys over to Trey Lance, Shanahan left plenty of subtle and not-so-subtle clues during his Tuesday morning media session at the NFL owners meetings at the Breakers Hotel.

So far this offseason, the 49ers have been unable to trade incumbent quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo, though not for a lack of effort. Shanahan reiterated what general manager John Lynch said Monday that Garoppolo's right shoulder surgery derailed potential trades.

That doesn't change the idea that the natural next step is for Lance to take over as he enters his second NFL season. All signs still point to the Niners hanging on to Garoppolo until he's healthy and then hope that trade talks spark back up while Lance continues to develop.

«That's why we looked into trading Jimmy because we obviously believe that Trey can be a starter and we're ready to do that,» Shanahan said. «But if we can't upgrade our team in another way, we're not just going to get rid of a good quarterback because we have other quarterbacks on the roster. Quarterbacks are really hard to come by. Some teams don't have any at all and the fact that we have three that we're happy with, that is a good thing.

»We brought Trey here to be that eventually, and I think that will be sooner than later but when Jimmy gets his surgery and we can't upgrade our team by getting some good picks until people feel good about that (surgery), I'm all right with that. We're not just getting rid of him