All things being equal, Kyle Shanahan and the San Francisco 49ers plan on having Brock Purdy as the starting quarterback in 2023. However, Purdy is still recovering from injury, which means Trey Lance has a chance to show his stuff as 49ers quarterback in OTAs. And one important player who Lance has impressed is superstar tight end George Kittle.

Kittle has been working with Lance and offseason free-agent signing Sam Darnold at OTAs, minicamp, and at Tight End University, and Kittle’s liked what he’s seen from the 2021 No. 3 overall pick.

“Trey has been great. I think he took steps forward in the OTAs,” Kittle shared. “It’s really fun when you start connecting on plays that you might have struggled [with] in the past, and that’s something that we did at OTAs a couple of times, so that was fun. Got to get a lot of extra work in with them.”

Outside of his progress on the field, Lance has also developed a bong with Kittle that the tight end says is something Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce have.

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“I just like talking ball with [Lance], too, because one of the things that Kelce was saying about him and Patrick is just they communicate about certain things,” Kittle said. “So as long as they’re on the same page, it doesn’t really matter what the defense does. You can find that spot, or he’s going to know what Travis is going to do on any given play because they’ve repped so many times, they’ve talked about it so many times.”

And this is where it gets interesting for Brock Purdy.

Purdy was the last pick of the 2022 draft, so as well as he played, he doesn’t have a huge investment from the team. Kyle Shanahan and the 49ers traded up for Trey Lance, so if he develops a strong bond with 49ers stars like George Kittle and others, it could be his job to win when Purdy returns.