It is widely known that 49ers fans travel well, and it turns out that Trey Lance fans do too. On Thursday, San Francisco's starting quarterback had 115 special guests at practice dressed in head-to-toe orange and black. The crew was bussed in from his alma mater of Marshall High School, located just 150 miles from the Minnesota Vikings TCO Performance Center. Coaches, staff and current Tigers football players attended practice and had a meet-and-greet with the 49ers QB1 immediately after the conclusion of team drills.
"It means a ton," Lance said. "I'm super thankful to the Vikings for setting it up. It's just an opportunity to see those guys that are going through what I went through. It doesn't seem like that long ago. I'm just super thankful."
Lance's first embrace was with Marshall's head football coach, Terry Bahlmann. The two shared a moment before No. 5 greeted the rest of the Tigers.
"It's surreal," Bahlmann said when asked about watching Lance's development in the NFL. "Trey deserves everything he has. He is just a fantastic human being, and he does things well. In high school, he was the first one there (at practice) and the last one to leave. He put his time in, and we watched him grow all the way along."
The Marshall football players got to see the chippier of the two joint practices this week. The 49ers and Vikings made it through two workouts without any major scuffles, but there were moments of intense, competitive energy from both teams.
Lance closed out the day completing 13 of 19 pass attempts and connecting multiple times with tight end George Kittle and wide receiver Deebo Samuel. The Vikings defense also had three would-be sacks on the 49ers second-year quarterback.
On the defensive side of the ball, defensive end Nick Bosa dominated. Full tackling of the quarterbacks at joint practices is a no-go, but if it was allowed, No. 97 would have had six sacks to his name on Thursday in addition to some impressive run stops.
