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As we are still months away from the 2022 NFL season kicking off, we must fine-tune our boards, formulate player tiers, and identify possible breakout candidates for the upcoming season.
It's not nearly as difficult to pick players early on in drafts, the real work is done in the middle and the end of them as hitting on a player who performs well above their ADP (average draft position) can many times win a league. In this research, we are looking for players with plenty of upside who appear undervalued by the rest of the fantasy community.
One such player who stands out is San Francisco 49ers Quarterback: Trey Lance.
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Trey Lance Introduction
It is important to take context into the situation of evaluating prospects before they arrive at the NFL. Trey Lance was recruited by several Division-1 programs in Iowa and Minnesota but they both wanted him to play wide receiver or recruit him solely as an athlete while not promising that he could play quarterback. Lance declined and instead committed to play at North Dakota State where they were more than happy to let him be their next signal caller.
After sitting behind Easton Stick during the 2018 season, Lance burst onto the scene in 2019 where he lead the NDSU Bison to a 16-0 record and the NCAA Division I Championship with a 28-20 victory over James Madison. Lance threw for 2,786 yards with 28 touchdowns and zero interceptions. He also added 1,100 yards rushing on the ground with 14 more scores. His stats were so good they appear straight out of a video game.
Many 2020 football seasons were cut short due to the outbreak of Covid-19 and Lance was only able to play in one game in 2020 before NDSU saw the rest of its season canceled. Rather than return to school for the 2021 season, Lance declined his final year of eligibility and entered the NFL Draft. While he mostly redshirted his rookie NFL season, it likely was a good thing for his long-term development being that he only was able to play one full season of college football. He will be an interesting case study for the upcoming season to see if that is true much like it was for Patrick Mahomes.
Trey Lance 2021 Season Review
After the 49ers traded pick 12 overall along with two future first-round picks (2022 & 2023) to move up to third overall to select Lance, his 2021 season was mostly treated as a redshirt and he played sparingly. In those limited touches, he showed some flashes of what he is capable of.
While Lance's rookie campaign didn't live up to many of the lofty expectations for him, he still steps into one of the best situations in the league with the 49ers in 2022. Lance has Kyle Shanahan as his coach, Elijah Mitchell next to him in the backfield, the number three overall PFF graded offensive line from 2021, and a trio of pass-catchers in Deebo Samuel, Brandon Aiyuk, and George Kittle.
It's difficult to break down Lance's advanced stats and make determinations for things such as air yards, money throws, interceptable passes, yards per attempt, true completion percentage, and true passer rating. While we have those numbers, they are inconclusive due to him only starting two games last year and it's difficult to draw absolutes from a limited sample size.
Lance did dazzle on a couple of plays, one in particular where he rolled out and fired a strike to the other side of the field to Deebo Samuel who caught it and ran in for a touchdown.
Trey Lance 2022 Outlook
While Jimmy Garoppolo is still with the 49ers, the expectations are that he will be moved prior to the start of the 2022 season and the job will be Lance's. Even though Lance and Jimmy G are completely different in style/abilities, it's important to note that Jimmy threw for 3,978 yards in 2019 and 3,810 in 2021. We can use the overall passing volume on the offense as a relative baseline of sorts when making predictions for Lance and the overall yardage he can contribute to the offense.
While it's probably unfair to think that Lance will throw for nearly 4,000 yards in his first full season, he can still be great for fantasy by only throwing for 3,000 because of his rushing upside. If Lance throws for 3,000 and rushes for 700, that is still more fantasy points than throwing for 4,000 without any rushing yardage. It is this aspect of Lance's game that makes him very intriguing for fantasy purposes.
Trey Lance Fantasy Football Predictions
This may seem like a bold statement, but the floor for Lance could very well be Jalen Hurts' 2021 season. It's hard to see him finishing outside of the top-12 if he plays the entire year. Quarterback rushing stats from college to the NFL tend to translate pretty well. Lamar Jackson, Jalen Hurts, and Kyler Murray are three quarterbacks who rushed between 800 to 1,000 yards per season in college and haven't had any problem replicating the same success at the NFL level. While it may seem risky to invest your fantasy season into a quarterback with just two starts under his belt, Lance's rushing upside gives him a relatively safe floor for fantasy production.
If we use Hurts' 2021 season as a baseline, there were 138 fantasy points scored from rushing alone in 15 games. If we average that out, Hurts started every game with a 9.22 baseline solely from rushing before he even threw a pass! Less mobile quarterbacks like Derek Carr, Aaron Rodgers, and Matthew Stafford have to throw for 225+ passing yards or two passing touchdowns just to break even with that kind of rushing floor.
While it's no guarantee that Lance will put up the same rushing numbers as Hurts, it's important to remember that running quarterbacks are a relative sort of cheat code in the fantasy landscape. While Lance may seem like a risky proposition, he's as safe as any choice out there because of his abilities as a runner. In fantasy, we are always looking to be ahead of the curve and to find breakout players before they happen.
Lance is a great pairing with a quarterback like Derek Carr in the SFB12, as well as in Superflex leagues where you can have a quarterback who is relatively safe (Carr) and one with tons of upside like Lance. He should be rostered in all 1QB leagues due to the reality that if he breaks out he will be nearly impossible to acquire without top waiver priority or will be incredibly expensive to acquire with FAAB.
As an analyst, it's important to put bias to the side and present all of the facts so that the readers can come to their own conclusions. Like a seismograph that picks up rumbles in the distance of a pending earthquake, this seismometer is detecting early waves of an imminent Trey Lance breakout.
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