“Some people get better when the lights are on,” Kyle Shanahan said in August, “And some get worse.” The lights will be on the 49ers for the next two weeks because of games on Sunday and Monday Night Football. With the team in the spotlight, they have a real opportunity to make a statement to the rest of the NFL: The bully is back.
As noted on today’s Gold Standard podcast, the one thing that the season-ending injury to Trey Lance has brought is clarity. There’s no more back and forth about Trey and Jimmy, no more debates about who should start, and no more speculation about which quarterback would have done what in a given scenario.