49ers in Five: Emmanuel Acho says Trey Lance “just ain’t it”

“The Niners chose to play Jimmy G. with a broken thumb over their first round, top three overall pick in Trey Lance”

Lather, rinse, repeat. It’s a day that ends in a “y,” so that must mean someone is criticizing Trey Lance once again. This time the hate comes from Fox Sports’ Emmanuel Acho, who may have coined a new nickname for all the Lance doubters out there.

Rather than hit all the talking points that refute some of these criticisms, let’s take a stroll down memory lane and look at how other quarterbacks have fared in their first two career starts:

While Lance isn’t the leader in every category, he certainly isn’t so far off that you could make a definitive statement about the rest of his career. In fact, he’s got the same completion percentage as Patrick Mahomes, the same amount of touchdowns as Russell Wilson, and almost twice as many rushing yards as any of them – with a broken finger on his throwing hand.

Compare Trey to the other quarterbacks drafted in the first round, and he looks even better, though you’d never know it based on what we’ve heard this offseason. Is everyone in the Jets’ building sold on Zack Wilson as their quarterback of the future? Or on Justin Fields in Chicago? Where are those anonymous sources?

As ever, none of these numbers means Lance is going to be a star. Just as none of them mean, he’s going to be a bust. All they mean is that he’s started two games. How anyone continues to make any definitive statements one way or the other after such a small sample size continues to baffle me.