He kept the 49ers afloat despite the Trey Lance misfires, but now he’s going to need talent.

Photo by Michael Zagaris/San Francisco 49ers/Getty Images

The Trey Lance trade may finally come to sting the San Francisco 49ers.

There aren’t many franchises that come to mind that don’t go to the toilet after giving up two future first round picks to move for a player that doesn’t work out. The 49ers are probably the only one many may say “it worked out.” They gave up the farm to go get a quarterback and move off Jimmy Garoppolo in 2021 and choose Trey Lance. It didn’t exactly work out. Each of the three years used to draft him, the 49ers have been in the NFC Championship game at-worst.

That 2021 season, the 49ers, with Garoppolo, made it to the NFC Championship game while Lance spent the majority of his rookie season on the sidelines. The 2022 season, Lance’s second year, the quarterback got one full game to show his stuff before getting injured and the season ended with third stringer Brock Purdy coming in. Purdy led the team to the NFC Championship and suffered an elbow injury. In 2023 before the season began, Lance was traded, Purdy was named the starter and 49ers made it to Super Bowl.

If this offseason is any indication, it’s that the 49ers are mighty expensive and navigating under the salary cap is growing more and more difficult. They’ve asked players to take pay cuts to varying success. They’ve done restructures and one-two year deals in free agency to address issues, but they are running out of money. This might be the last year the core of the 49ers is left intact.

And therein lies the issue: The 2024 draft may be the most crucial in Kyle Shanahan’s tenure. This is not a draft of best player available, or simply plugging in needs. It’s now having a birds-eye view of contracts expiring and players that may call it a career and having the future ready to go. A lot of moving parts this time around and there’s little room for error. There’s a lot of money their roster will (rightly) ask for and there will be more tough decisions to make.

Perhaps those three picks used to draft Trey Lance could have been used on a defensive lineman to prepare for Arik Armstead’s departure, an offensive lineman if Trent Williams is injured or calls it a career, they have someone ready. Or maybe those picks wouldn’t work out either. We don’t know.

This isn’t going to be a “What could have been.” For reasons we don’t need to get into here, had the 49ers not drafted Trey Lance, I doubt the events would have been put in place for Brock Purdy’s drafting. The sequence of events would have been different. What it is going to say is, the 49ers put a lot of their future on a guy they traded away and now with he ammo they have, it is absolutely crucial they nail this draft.

The Lance trade made sense, but now those development prospects or lack thereof is going to make difficult situations even more difficult.

They can’t wait until the 5th round to get their contingency plan in place.