The excitement for the first day of training camp never quite matches up with reality. For the 49ers, the reality is Nick Bosa is holding out, Brock Purdy won’t participate until Thursday, and there will be no padded practice until Sunday.
With those qualifiers out of the way, Wednesday was indeed the first time nearly the entire 49ers roster took the field together, and offered the first extended, healthy glimpses of the other three quarterbacks.
Even with limitations on reps and contact, there were a few notable moments from practice.
Practice, and other notes
All three quarterbacks not named Brock Purdy got a decent run, with Trey Lance and Sam Darnold splitting the lion’s share of the reps. They each took 16, while Brandon Allen had the remaining eight reps.
You will not find their completions listed here, because in a non-padded, non-full-speed practice, it’s not a valuable exercise to state who completed how many passes.
The context of those throws, however, is useful.
Lance’s best throw of the day was actually broken up by Fred Warner. He layered a nearly perfect ball towards Deebo Samuel, who was slicing from the middle of the field to the right sideline on a deep drag route. Warner, though, used all of his range, intelligence and athleticism to get fingertips on the throw to break it up.
Samuel said he felt it coming.
“Fred is the hardest guy to get a special [play] on,” Samuel said. “So as I’m running over, I already know Fred’s over there. We kind of talked about it with Trey, like, ain’t too much more you could have done with that ball. Fred is always gonna be the guy to try to stop that route every day.”
Lance took a few checkdowns and had a nice completion to Ty Davis-Price down the left sideline while under pressure from an oncoming Warner earlier in the practice.
He also had some disappointing throws that were completed. On back-to-back plays, he targeted hitch routes, which should have been matched with back shoulder throws.
Both were covered by Deommodore Lenoir. The first went to Jauan Jennings and was to his inside shoulder, forcing Jennings to tussle with Lenoir for possession of the ball. He ultimately won out, but it was a potential interception.
The next play was outrageous from Brandon Aiyuk and underwhelming from Lance. Lance put plenty of height on the ball to let Aiyuk make a play on it, but once again left the ball to the inside, where Lenoir had an angle to it.
Lance’s lack of precision didn’t matter this time, either. Aiyuk sprung up like a kid wearing moon shoes and made a nonsensical, high-point catch look easy. Then he got in the face of Lenoir — who he exchanged friendly barbs with on social media before camp started — to show him a little extra love.
Sam Darnold had a solid day, and on the whole, looked a bit more precise than Lance did.
He also took a few checkdowns. On one play, he hit Aiyuk right out of his break, leaving him wide open over the middle. Darnold also bounced back from a rare sack, in which he got tripped up to the ground by a defensive end who’d fallen towards the pocket.
Like Lance, he was dealt a great breakup from the defense. He launched a deep ball to Danny Gray, who had beaten the corner covering him and looked to like he was open deep, for a potential go ball touchdown. Talanoa Hufanga had other ideas about that, ranging over quickly and swatting the ball out of the air.
Hufanga and Gray exchanged words after the play, with Gray — who had one catch last season — clearly juiced up by an outstanding catch he’d made earlier.
That previous snag from Gray was probably the catch of the day, or at least tied with Aiyuk’s leaping grab. It came on a gorgeous ball down the right sideline from Brandon Allen over the top of D’Shawn Jamison. Gray snagged it and finished with a picturesque sideline toe tap, letting the defensive sideline hear it.
Those were the highlights of the day. It’s hard to glean too much else this early, though Jordan Mason had an up-and-down performance, fumbling once and dropping a pass over the middle, while also running very effectively on his other touches.
Christian McCaffrey didn’t participate in practice after individual drills, and Brock Purdy watched on, as scheduled.
Nick Bosa, meanwhile, was added to the reserve/did not report list, meaning he did not show up to camp — as John Lynch said he expected — for a rare, modern era holdout. He is subject to a fine of up to $40,000 a day, though that can be waived. He’s also subject to a fine of a week’s salary for each preseason game missed, which amounts to $949,389 for Bosa.
The reigning Defensive Player of the Year has some time to burn now, as his agent Brian Ayrault negotiates with the 49ers.
Here’s what I’d be up to, were I in his shoes:
Five things I would be doing right now if I were Nick Bosa
- Visiting my local library to check out literature — written by reputable authors — on negotiation tactics
- Taking Ron Finley’s Masterclass on gardening to prepare my garden for the abrupt, summer-to-fall horticultural shift after training camp
- Kicking my feet up, going through my rolodex and calling up my besties to find out how their practices went on my corded hamburger phone
- Working on watercolors, drawing seascapes, perhaps incorporating a selkie or two
- Watching those brain-liquefying life hack TikToks and testing how many actually work