Roster sustainability within the context of the salary cap.
Ever since taking over the San Francisco 49ers’ football operations in 2017, general manager John Lynch and coach Kyle Shanahan have emphasized it.
Take Lynch’s comments some three and a half years ago in a jubilant home locker room after the 49ers had won the January 2020 NFC Championship Game against the Green Bay Packers.
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“We had six-year contracts, and that gave us a little leeway to do what we thought was right as opposed to a short, quick fix,” Lynch said of constructing the 49ers’ roster alongside Shanahan. “We had money, maybe we could have done that. But we built it the right way.
“The coolest thing is, I think this is sustainable.”
Fast forward to 2023. We’re in the aftermath of the 49ers’ trade of quarterback Trey Lance to the Dallas Cowboys. It’s been only about 28 months since the 49ers used a boatload of first-round draft capital to move up and select Lance with 2021’s No. 3 pick. Less than a year ago, Lance was the No. 1 QB on their depth chart.
And now, he’s gone. This 49ers’ regime has punted on what’s been, by far, its biggest investment. What went wrong? The entire Lance saga and its downstream effects will continue to be scrutinized from every angle for a long time to come.
Kyle Shanahan knew. Some of his players might have too. Sam Darnold had earned the No. 2 spot under center.
Which meant Trey Lance was out.
“The toughest part is the human element."
More reaction, chronicled by @LombardiHimself and @mattbarrows.https://t.co/HMzVdWlRID
— The Athletic NFL (@TheAthleticNFL) August 26, 2023
But perhaps any retrospective look would be most productive if viewed through the lens of the original domino: What pushed the 49ers down the path of trading up, drafting and trying to develop Lance in the first place?
Shanahan retraced some of the 49ers’ key steps last week, shortly after the 49ers had named Sam Darnold their backup quarterback over Lance, setting the trade wheels in motion.
His answer was revelatory. It suggested the 49ers opened the process with team-wide motivations, and not in search of a specific quarterback. The 49ers eventually became enamored with Lance, but the move’s initial impetus came from bigger-picture self-evaluation.
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“When you go back to three years ago, we made a commitment looking at our roster,” Shanahan said. “We felt it was important with our roster going forward that eventually we were going to need a quarterback on a rookie deal if we wanted to keep this team together. We made that decision after the 2020 season, and we weren’t going to look back after that.”
Shanahan offered more context. He added the 49ers calculated they wouldn’t be able to afford their growing collection of star power if they held onto a big-money quarterback — Jimmy Garoppolo was making $27 million per year at the time — beyond the 2021 season. So the plan called for one season of overlap in 2021 between Garoppolo and Lance.
The 49ers planned to rely on the veteran to help usher the rookie into the fold that season through specially tailored package play based on Lance’s dual-threat skill set. Then, looking ahead to 2022, they planned to make Lance — playing on a rookie contract worth about $8.5 million annually — the No. 1 quarterback.
“We thought we would mix Trey in and ease him in that first year with a couple packages, because we didn’t believe anyone that we would’ve taken would’ve beaten out Jimmy that first year,” Shanahan said. “And then, Year 2 was when (Lance) did have the job. We were giving it to him. We were 100 percent committed. We were tailoring everything for him.”
The 49ers thought they could spend a season with both Trey Lance and Jimmy Garoppolo around before turning the job over to Lance in 2022. (Ezra Shaw / Getty Images)It’s clear, especially in retrospect, that the 49ers were trying to thread a particularly tiny needle. And that might’ve been their gravest miscalculation in the process. They were trying to contend for a Super Bowl with a veteran quarterback while simultaneously grooming the rookie to take over for the long run.
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The awkward and necessary end to the 49ers' Trey Lance era
In all fairness, this wasn’t a totally novel undertaking. The Kansas City Chiefs had successfully executed a similar blueprint with Patrick Mahomes, who sat his 2017 rookie year behind veteran Alex Smith, and Shanahan cited that example in 2021 when offering his vision for the transition to Lance.
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But a fundamental difference made the 49ers’ tightrope walk much more treacherous than Kansas City’s.
For one, Lance — a raw prospect who played his college ball in the FCS at North Dakota State — entered the NFL with exponentially less experience than Mahomes, who started 32 games in college at Texas Tech. Lance faced longer odds because he needed to make major improvements to his mechanics in a relatively short period of time while facing markedly bigger, faster and stronger competition.
Lance then broke his finger near the end of the 2021 preseason. Shanahan abandoned package-play plans for the rookie shortly after that injury, which scuttled the first phase of the 49ers’ developmental plan for Lance and ultimately compromised his throwing motion for a calendar year.
When Lance finally regained full health and assumed the starting job in 2022, as the 49ers had planned when they drafted him, a fractured ankle ended his season in Week 2.
Two injuries in two years had pummeled the 49ers’ ambitious developmental experiment at quarterback. By extension, the cost efficiency Lynch and Shanahan had coveted for their larger roster-building vision vanished.
And then it suddenly reappeared through another young quarterback when Brock Purdy finished the 2022 season for the 49ers after Lance and Garoppolo (who’d re-signed as a backup at a big discount) got hurt.
Purdy boasts an even more affordable financial footprint as the last pick in the 2022 draft. His cap hit in 2023 is only about $889,000, and he’s secured status as Shanahan’s chosen QB after a stellar 2022 stretch run and a speedy offseason recovery from the UCL tear he suffered in the January 2023 NFC Championship Game.
“I think we are very fortunate that we did find (Purdy),” Shanahan said. “We still have a rookie quarterback or a guy on a rookie deal that has helped us put together a good team. We do have a guy that we believe we can win with on that deal and we also feel we have a very strong backup. That’s where we’re at.”
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Lance — who’s owed $6.3 million over the remainder of 2023 and 2024 — very quickly became too expensive for the 49ers’ sustainability blueprint, especially after Darnold pushed him to the No. 3 spot. So now, Dallas will pay Lance that remaining $6.3 million instead.
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“You’d love to keep a third guy to develop, especially a guy that you really, really love and believe that he could do it someday,” Shanahan said. “But to do that for $7 million over two years with places where you are in the cap when you can’t provide those reps, when you’ve got other things (happening) with our team, that to me doesn’t make much sense for the Niners.
“I wish it would, because hell yeah, we’d love to just keep him until eventually it works out. But that clock ran out here.”
The next clock is already ticking. It’s the countdown for Nick Bosa’s contract extension, which the 49ers must finalize within the next two weeks to make sure the star edge rusher plays in the Sept. 10 season opener at Pittsburgh.
The savings the 49ers have attained through Purdy’s affordable salary and through the offloading of Lance’s contract mean that the team is — at least in theory — in better position than ever to re-sign Bosa, whose holdout has now lasted over a month.
So, what’s taking so long?
It seems that both sides are trying to drive a particularly hard bargain. Bosa, the reigning defensive player of the year, might be shooting to make more money both annually and in guarantees than Aaron Donald and T.J. Watt, the two highest-paid defensive linemen in the NFL. The 49ers, meanwhile, are staring at a crowded cap situation that might play a role in Tuesday’s roster cutdown.
49ers must soon cut down to 53. They'll have to keep that group + 16-man practice squad and IR/PUP combined salaries under the salary cap. Offseason top-51 rule will no longer apply
Will projected 49ers' roster fit under the cap? I calculated… barely:https://t.co/7oJLL1O8rV pic.twitter.com/WBbTwUkzFV
— David Lombardi (@LombardiHimself) August 27, 2023
“We’ve got a lot of work to do and we’ll continue to do that,” Lynch said Friday of negotiations with Bosa. “He’s a great player. We want him here. We need him here.”
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The crowdedness of the 49ers’ 2023 salary-cap situation, illustrated above, should incentivize the 49ers to consummate a deal with Bosa. His 2023 cap hit of $17.9 million will almost certainly decrease, perhaps by as much as about $8 million, if a new contract is backloaded — as is expected. The 49ers will likely need more 2023 cap room to make some in-season transactions.
The concern and possible holdup in negotiations revolves around the impact that Bosa’s mega-deal will have on the 49ers’ cap outlook in future seasons, particularly in 2024. As shown below, the 49ers already have $263.5 million in total liabilities spread across 50 players next season. That number already exceeds Over the Cap’s projected 2024 salary cap of $256 million (and that’s a number the website acknowledges is “bullish”).
Charting sustainability: 49ers cap look
| Year | Players signed | Total liabilities | Est salary-cap |
|---|---|---|---|
69* | $237 million | $237.5 million** | |
50 | $263.5 million | $256 million | |
42 | $208.2 million | $282 million | |
25 | $121.9 million | $300 million | |
9 | $10.9 million | $315 million |
* 53-man roster plus 16-man practice squad that’ll be signed this week
** Set size of 49ers’ 2023 adjusted salary cap
Consider that the $263.5 million tab for 2024 doesn’t even include Bosa’s bill (yet), and the 49ers are already over the projected cap for the season. Trading Lance freed up 2024 cap space, but the 49ers can’t abandon efforts at financial efficiency now. Every dollar will matter in 2024, when the 49ers will be looking to attain cap compliance while minimizing collateral roster damage.
The entire financial picture is connected. It factored in so prominently as a driver of the 49ers’ move to acquire Lance, it’s back on center stage now following the end of the quarterback’s journey with the team and it certainly won’t go away as Lynch pivots all his attention to re-signing Bosa.
(Top photos: Loren Elliott and Tim Nwachukwu / Getty Images)
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