Key Takeaways Trey Lance’s potential was high coming out of college, but he lacked game reps.
An injury derailed Lance’s 2022 season with the 49ers, ultimately spelling the end of his time with the franchise.
Given how far behind he is in his development, Lance’s career may no longer be salvageable.
Fans’ fascination with the NFL Draft is best explained by the excitement of the unknown. After a player’s first couple of seasons in the league, most people have a general idea of what they are and aren’t. But when they’re entering the NFL , the possibilities are endless.
Each early-round selection has the opportunity to change their franchise’s fortunes for better or worse. They could be the next Patrick Mahomes or the next Zach Wilson .
The truth is that even the most thorough and calculated organizations leave a lot up to chance. Players can look promising in theory, but not everything goes according to plan. Dallas Cowboys backup quarterback Trey Lance is the latest example of this.
Since going third overall to the San Francisco 49ers in 2021, he has failed to meet expectations and enters the final year of his rookie contract in disarray. With Lance’s future in football in question, it’s only fair to revisit how he got here.
Related Is the Trey Lance Experiment Over in Dallas? After throwing five interceptions in the Cowboys’ final preseason game, it’s clear that Trey Lance’s chance as an NFL starter is over.
Trey Lance Was A Highly Touted Prospect
Teams were bullish on the North Dakota State Product’s potential
Credit: Kirby Lee
Lance put himself on the NFL’s radar during the 2019 college football season. The redshirt-freshman led North Dakota State to a 16-0 record and an FCS Championship. While he was far from a finished product, scouts found the 19-year-old intriguing. He had an NFL frame, a strong arm, high-end rushing ability, and threw 28 touchdowns and no interceptions in his first full season at the collegiate level.
GIVEMESPORT Key Stat: Trey Lance holds the NCAA record for most pass attempts without an interception in a single season, with 287, according to ESPN.
Lance played one game in 2020 before opting out of the remainder of the season. The way he saw it, he was already projected to go early in the first round, and playing lower-level football during a global pandemic yielded greater risk than reward. Lance declared for the 2020 Draft and quickly rose to the top of most draft boards.
On the heels of Josh Allen ’s metamorphosis from a raw and sporadic player to a superstar quarterback, teams were becoming more enamored with physical traits, and there wasn’t a better traits quarterback in the 2021 NFL Draft than Lance.
He was built in a lab to play high-level athletics. Listed at 6-foot-4 and 226 pounds, Lance offered a combination of size, arm talent, and athleticism that the quarterback position hadn’t seen since Cam Newton.
Trey Lance College Stats Games 19 Passing Yards 2,947 Rushing Yards 1,325 Passing TDs 30 Rushing TDs 18 INTs 1 Comp % 65.4 *Stats courtesy of ESPN
In addition to the physical upside, Lance possessed solid feel for the position. He had experience calling his own protections and was an above-average processor. Having shown so much potential in just one season of college ball, there was a lot of optimism. The 49ers, who traded three first-round picks to move up to the third slot, selected Lance, seemingly making him their quarterback of the future.
As tantalizing of a prospect as Lance was, there was an undeniable caveat. He needed game reps, and lots of them. With only one season of FCS football under his belt, Lance wasn’t as equipped for the NFL as his draft classmates, such as Justin Fields and Trevor Lawrence , who played in prestigious conferences and made the College Football Playoff multiple times.
The early issue was that the 49ers were a win-now team. They were in the Super Bowl two seasons prior and had high hopes for their 2021 squad. This made the franchise’s goals for Lance and the team mutually exclusive.
The best thing for Lance’s development was to get on the field and accumulate reps, but as the youngest quarterback in the league and with limited experience against NFL-caliber athletes, he was likely to make some mistakes, potentially costing the 49ers games.
As a result, San Francisco decided to punt on Lance for the season and had Jimmy Garoppolo start for most of the year. Lance filled in from time to time but only logged 71 pass attempts.
An Early-Season Injury Led To Lance’s Exit From San Francisco
Lance lost his starting job to injury and never recaptured it
Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports
It was the 2022 season when things began to go off the rails. Lance, who had been named the Week 1 starter, suffered a season-ending ankle injury in Week 2, handing the proverbial keys to the offense back to Garoppolo. When Garoppolo missed time with an injury of his own, a seventh-round rookie by the name of Brock Purdy came in and miraculously led San Francisco to the NFC title game.
By the time 2023 rolled around, the 49ers quarterback room was in a state of pandemonium. San Francisco had invested a lot in Lance, but he was behind in his development. Purdy, on the other hand, had proven to be a perfect fit for Kyle Shanahan’s offense.
The 49ers were stuck in the ultimate catch-22. The reason Lance wasn’t as good as the team wanted him to be was that he had only started four games in two years. The solution would be to give him as many game reps as possible, but since Lance was still in the early stages of his development, he would almost certainly cost crucial wins for a team with Super Bowl potential.
While San Francisco may have been prepared to lose games in the name of Lance’s development in 2022, it didn’t have the same attitude in 2023. With a young, capable quarterback already on the roster, the 49ers traded Lance to the Cowboys for a fourth-round pick.
Lance spent the 2023 season with Dallas as a backup. He got extended reps in the 2024 preseason, attempting 113 passes in three games. Unfortunately, the flashes of good were largely overshadowed by the bad. Lance threw five interceptions in the Cowboys’ preseason finale against the Los Angeles Chargers , showing how much more work still needs to be done.
Lance May Be Too Far Behind In His Development To Salvage His Career
Lance can’t make up for the playing time he’s missed
Credit: Tim Heitman-USA TODAY Sports
At this point, Lance is essentially a rookie entering his fourth year. Excluding the preseason, he’s thrown a total of 420 passes since he graduated high school. For reference, Denver Broncos rookie Bo Nix has thrown 1,936. It’s no wonder that Lance hasn’t lived up to expectations. The one thing he desperately needed coming out of college continues to elude him.
While it isn’t necessarily Lance’s fault he hasn’t gotten enough playing, it’s not his current team’s responsibility to prioritize his development. Lance is at least a year’s worth of game reps away from being a passable regular-season quarterback. If the team that invested three first-round picks in him ultimately determined he wasn’t worth the trouble, it’s hard to imagine anyone else thinking otherwise.
Lance is set to hit free agency in 2025, and it’s fair to ponder where he fits into the league today. He’s nowhere near qualified enough to be a starter and lacks the tools of a typical backup.
It’s easy to say with the benefit of hindsight that Lance was never going to make it in the NFL. Maybe the league was too credulous of a toolsy player with one year of good FCS film. However, it seems that we’ll never know for certain what Lance could’ve been had things played out more favorably, and that in itself is tragic.
All stats courtesy of Pro Football Reference unless stated otherwise