CFZ The murky thinking behind the Trey Lance trade

[Chuck 54]

Last August, seemingly out of nowhere, Jerry Jones apparently made a fairly big decision without consulting his HC: He traded a 4th round pick to the 49ers in exchange for the niners former first round QB Trey Lance, who the niners had clearly decided was a mistake. Approximately six months and an entire regular season later, a clear purpose for this trade is still somewhat unclear if not strange.

Trey Lance has yet to take a meaningful snap for the Cowboys and was never on the game day roster this past season. Last off-season, the Cowboys had signed backup QB Cooper Rush to a two year, $5,000,000 contract. Rush has one more year on that deal but it does have a fairly painless out if they choose to release him as an upcoming post June 1 cut.

Also in this mix of head scratchers is the fact that Lance goes into 2024 on the last year of his rookie deal before becoming an unrestricted FA.
So here are some of my questions about the Lance move:

• What was the primary purpose for obtaining Trey Lance? (A successor to Dak, leverage against Dak in contract negotiations, future trade bait with other teams?)
• Are the Cowboys following some kind of plan with him…or not?
• How can the Cowboys know what they have in Lance if they hang on to Cooper Rush as the backup?

Here are some possible scenarios/answers to those questions:

• A- Lance was obtained to give the Cowboys leverage and a possible replacement for Dak should the team decide to move on from Dak. (I don’t see how Lance could be much trade bait if he never sees the field here)
• B- The plan is for Dak to be extended one more year, give time to develop Lance, then make him the starter in 2025. ???? If there’s a plan it’s not at all very clear.
• C- The Cowboys somehow already know what they have (or don’t have in Lance) Or…they are going to find out in TC this year?

Honestly I would be fine moving on from Dak via a trade if this team was willing to do a rebuild similar to what the pack did with Jordan Love last year. The problems there would be 1. Jerry won’t do a “rebuild” and 2. We don’t know if Lance is good enough to hand the keys to the car yet.

So what is the plan for Trey Lance? Is this some grand 3 dimensional chess our GM is playing? Or is it a strange fantasy football move centered on throwing spaghetti on the wall and seeing what sticks? If there is some grand and brilliant plan here, I’m not seeing it.

Thoughts?

We don’t have the draft capital for a rebuild and cannot trade Dak for capital. You cannot do a rebuild without securing extra draft capital than what is usual for maintaining the status quo. It’s one thing to say you are changing QBs, but a rebuild is much much bigger. The Cowboys are not in need of a rebuild. We need a RB. We need to strengthen the defense up the middle. With Lamb about to get a big contract, we need to draft another stud wr to stay young on the other side. This year or next.

 

[TexasHillbilly]

Last August, seemingly out of nowhere, Jerry Jones apparently made a fairly big decision without consulting his HC: He traded a 4th round pick to the 49ers in exchange for the niners former first round QB Trey Lance, who the niners had clearly decided was a mistake. Approximately six months and an entire regular season later, a clear purpose for this trade is still somewhat unclear if not strange.

Trey Lance has yet to take a meaningful snap for the Cowboys and was never on the game day roster this past season. Last off-season, the Cowboys had signed backup QB Cooper Rush to a two year, $5,000,000 contract. Rush has one more year on that deal but it does have a fairly painless out if they choose to release him as an upcoming post June 1 cut.

Also in this mix of head scratchers is the fact that Lance goes into 2024 on the last year of his rookie deal before becoming an unrestricted FA.
So here are some of my questions about the Lance move:

• What was the primary purpose for obtaining Trey Lance? (A successor to Dak, leverage against Dak in contract negotiations, future trade bait with other teams?)
• Are the Cowboys following some kind of plan with him…or not?
• How can the Cowboys know what they have in Lance if they hang on to Cooper Rush as the backup?

Here are some possible scenarios/answers to those questions:

• A- Lance was obtained to give the Cowboys leverage and a possible replacement for Dak should the team decide to move on from Dak. (I don’t see how Lance could be much trade bait if he never sees the field here)
• B- The plan is for Dak to be extended one more year, give time to develop Lance, then make him the starter in 2025. ???? If there’s a plan it’s not at all very clear.
• C- The Cowboys somehow already know what they have (or don’t have in Lance) Or…they are going to find out in TC this year?

Honestly I would be fine moving on from Dak via a trade if this team was willing to do a rebuild similar to what the pack did with Jordan Love last year. The problems there would be 1. Jerry won’t do a “rebuild” and 2. We don’t know if Lance is good enough to hand the keys to the car yet.

So what is the plan for Trey Lance? Is this some grand 3 dimensional chess our GM is playing? Or is it a strange fantasy football move centered on throwing spaghetti on the wall and seeing what sticks? If there is some grand and brilliant plan here, I’m not seeing it.

Thoughts?

You forgot D. So the forum fans will have someone else to bash.

 

[CowboyoWales]

Tons of highlight film on Lance.

#phenom

We are lucky to make the trade for Lance.

Hope the injury bug left Lance in SFran.

.....and your point is? Lance was a decent trade for a fourth Rd QB, whether he's QB2 (whilst he learns to offense and steps up to 2 or 1 if negotiations fail) or QB3 where he sits behind a Cooper Rush that's worked with the Offense for 6 years (but has reached his ceiling as a QB2).

An argument could be that we've virtually ignored the QB group, which has given Dak....AND MORE IMPORTANTLY France the luxury of job/contract security.

 

[CowboysFaninHouston]

Not a stupid trade.

The kid can play.

how do you know? where have you seen him play good enough to warrant such confidence?

 

[baltcowboy]

Lance is the same age as most of the quarterbacks in this draft. The kid was a 20 year old rookie. Lance should have transferred to a bigger school and actually played his last season NDST did him dirty.

 

[Bobhaze]

We don’t have the draft capital for a rebuild and cannot trade Dak for capital. You cannot do a rebuild without securing extra draft capital than what is usual for maintaining the status quo. It’s one thing to say you are changing QBs, but a rebuild is much much bigger. The Cowboys are not in need of a rebuild. We need a RB. We need to strengthen the defense up the middle. With Lamb about to get a big contract, we need to draft another stud wr to stay young on the other side. This year or next.

Chuck, I’m gonna disagree with you on this one. A new great WR won’t help us get better in the playoffs. We must obtain beasts at DL, LB, OL and some new blood at RB. IMO, Without upgrades in those positions, we could obtain 4 All Pro WRs and we won’t be any better off.

 

[cowboyed]

Ok but if they extend Dak for two more years, what will that mean for Lance? I can’t make it make sense.

I think there would have been a lot of press and Jerry outrage by fans if our figurehead GM force fed Lance to McCarthy. From my rusty recollection it seemed that McCarthy was excited about getting Lance in the quarterback fold. Tony Romo sat on the sidelines for several years before Parcells put him out on the field. I hope Trey can show up in pre-season, maybe Rush will get a starting opportunity elsewhere and Trey can directly back up Dak. I can dream, can't I.

 

[blueblood70]

Ok but if they extend Dak for two more years, what will that mean for Lance? I can’t make it make sense.

Teams do this, why not US..

What’s the difference,

guys like Romo, Love, Rogers, etc etc have also sat, I mean Garoppolo and Brisset ,drafted and sat just to name a few, It’s the same thing IMHO.

At least we didn’t give 3 1sts for Him…or pick many and so many 1st round busts in qbs, Lance is simply an attempt at finding backup and possibly future starter who knows, a 4th isn’t bad when they pick a guy like Mike White, what in the 5th??

simple answer BOB, no conspiracy, simply grabbing a player maybe you can develop.

 

[Coogiguy03]

I wonder what Lance is going to do. If he never plays and the Cowboys let him go he probably won't get much more then backup money....I don't know what that looks like maybe 3 years $6M. Then he'll likely be on to his 3rd team. It looks like his best option is to go somewhere with a bad QB situation and try to beat someone out. Or he could go to a good team and hope for a injury. Maybe at this point he's happy with his rookie money and will play the backup card as long as he can. Hopefully he's been learning how to play and with another 3 year contract you hope he can pull a Gino Smith comeback, but without playing time I don't know if that is realistic.

I thought he was more of a scrambling run and gun type QB, but with his injury maybe he has to learn to be a pocket QB now.

this might be the team

 

[thunderpimp91]

Teams do this, why not US..

What’s the difference,

guys like Romo, Love, Rogers, etc etc have also sat, I mean Garoppolo and Brisset ,drafted and sat just to name a few, It’s the same thing IMHO.

At least we didn’t give 3 1sts for Him…or pick many and so many 1st round busts in qbs, Lance is simply an attempt at finding backup and possibly future starter who knows, a 4th isn’t bad when they pick a guy like Mike White, what in the 5th??

simple answer BOB, no conspiracy, simply grabbing a player maybe you can develop.

I think the difference here is that Lance is likey to draw low end starter money when he does reach free agency. Unless the Cowboys actually shock the world and decide to move on from Dak, the odds of Lance sticking around to be a backup for another 4-5 years are extremely slim.

 

[blueblood70]

I think the difference here is that Lance is likey to draw low end starter money when he does reach free agency. Unless the Cowboys actually shock the world and decide to move on from Dak, the odds of Lance sticking around to be a backup for another 4-5 years are extremely slim.

Well, you had me until you exaggerated like people do around here.. why would he need to be a backup for four or five more years? We're talking about let's see if he can be the number 2 and then move on from there... In like New England did with these two guys I mentioned above,

if this is the case, the Cowboys could at least get their four back or maybe even a three for the guy if he shows that much flashes where he would have any real hits in free agency from somebody else.​

​

I mean at this point right now he's considered a bust and a future project, so no one's going to give him the money that he could get here as a backup move them from the Cowboys unless he plays better if he shows something at #2 is why you keep him for the next at least one season maybe 2 and then maybe you could get more capital for him if we keep Dak for that long...​

 

[blueblood70]

I think there would have been a lot of press and Jerry outrage by fans if our figurehead GM force fed Lance to McCarthy. From my rusty recollection it seemed that McCarthy was excited about getting Lance in the quarterback fold. Tony Romo sat on the sidelines for several years before Parcells put him out on the field. I hope Trey can show up in pre-season, maybe Rush will get a starting opportunity elsewhere and Trey can directly back up Dak. I can dream, can't I.

Dude you had me until the Cooper rush comment he is not a starter he's not truly even one of the better backups we saw from 2023 me literally look how many backups had to come in and play some of the retreads like Joe Flacco play way better than Cooper rush... Cooper rush is the most overrated player on our team he goes five and one and yet people literally just gloss over the fact that he wasn't that good when he played we saw it he wasn't even safe with the football that's like the comment the man plays within the offense no he doesn't there's no evidence of that at all he played well enough while the team was smoking hot around him to win a game but still had our offense in the bottom ten of the league in almost every category....


Cooper rush wouldn't is never gonna get a starting opportunity let's just be real... But he could be traded for a backup position but the fact is no other team has ever taken him off our practice squad or when he was a free agent to even bring him in as a backup that is because they actually watched film differently then fat Cowboys fans who watch through they wanna get rid of DAK and think Cooper rush is better than Prescott.

So the better plan would be just to outright release Cooper rush after camp if you can't get a trade for him and give Trey his chance... In my opinion if we lost Prescott for a majority of the season like 10 games or out for the season,​

​

I don't care who your backup is we're probably not going anywhere so why not give Trey Lance all those games to develop and see what he's really got on whether you want to keep them in 2025 and beyond?? We already know what Cooper rush is he's a very average to below average back up they can win you a game or two if everything else is like smoking hot around him... There is no way last season if Cooper rush was starting without that run game the offensive line being shaky the defense finding ways to lose games he would have struggled to win one game...​

 

[CowboysFaninHouston]

Chuck, I’m gonna disagree with you on this one. A new great WR won’t help us get better in the playoffs. We must obtain beasts at DL, LB, OL and some new blood at RB. IMO, Without upgrades in those positions, we could obtain 4 All Pro WRs and we won’t be any better off.

if we don't fix the defense, we have no chance. we heard it from horses mouth. Love said, we had DBs playing LB and they attacked that. is that Quinn's fault? perhaps, perhaps not. the GM is responsible to put the team together. we went light in # of LBs to start with. then had injuries. and never replaced them, instead put safties play LB. we got bowled over several times during the year, yet we didn't adjust. that's on the GM. he plays Madden football, while the rest of the league plays real football.

 

[thunderpimp91]

Well, you had me until you exaggerated like people do around here.. why would he need to be a backup for four or five more years? We're talking about let's see if he can be the number 2 and then move on from there... In like New England did with these two guys I mentioned above,

if this is the case, the Cowboys could at least get their four back or maybe even a three for the guy if he shows that much flashes where he would have any real hits in free agency from somebody else.​

​

I mean at this point right now he's considered a bust and a future project, so no one's going to give him the money that he could get here as a backup move them from the Cowboys unless he plays better if he shows something at #2 is why you keep him for the next at least one season maybe 2 and then maybe you could get more capital for him if we keep Dak for that long...​

I partially agree with what you're saying, but I think we have a fundamental disagreement on what the free agency market for Lance would look like. If he were a free agent this year I would have to believe that a team like New England would throw him a 1 year $10M deal plus some incentives to take an audition year with them. No idea what the QB market will look like this time next year, but I have to believe there will be a couple of interested teams in him. I just dont see a realistic scenario where you keep him past 2024 without an actual path to compete for a starting gig.

I do think you have a chance to net a decent comp pick if he walks after this season though...

 

[Reverend Conehead]

Hate to throw cold water on all this Lance talk but IMO he is not and likely never will be the answer at QB. The 49ers paid a king's ransom to draft the guy. He had slipped down the depth chart to number 3 out there behind the much traveled Sam Darnold. SF knew they had a good team this year. Number 2 QB is an important guy on good teams. The choice of Darnold over Lance was an easy one evidently. The 49ers bit the bullet and traded Lance and moved on.

Here in Dallas he evidently never threatened to be the number 2 guy and displace Cooper Rush. Lance was the emergency QB even when Rush was somewhat banged up at the end of the season. IMO Dak Prescott has no real competition on the roster currently. He is better than number 2 Rush and way better than number 3 Lance. We need to add some guys in the QB room....good players that can really push to be number 1.

There's still some play that remains to be seen. Lance did not have training camp last year. The upcoming season will be the first one in which he will have been through a Cowboys training camp. We won't really have an idea if he's worth hanging onto until he's been through camp and has played in preseason games. I'm not saying he is Dak's heir apparent, or even that he's our next backup. I'm only saying we won't know until we've first seen him in camp and in preseason. I do think it's a long shot, though IMO less of a long shot than other QBs this team has made projects of (see Ryan Leaf). It's not a good sign that he could not even win the backup position in SF after they had invested so much. My thought is: Don't throw out this long shot just yet. Gotta see him in camp and preseason first. Sometimes players are late bloomers.

 

[JustChip]

I simply think he saw a chance to get a first-round talent for a relatively low cost. There is no grand and brilliant plan other than that and the options it creates.

1) If we re-sign Dak and he plays poorly while Lance has a great preseason, we could have Lance take over. (I consider this to be an unlikely scenario because Dak has generally put up good numbers during the regular season.)

2) If we re-sign Dak and he plays up to his regular level while Lance has a great preseason, we could trade Lance and make a profit on the acquisition.

3) If Lance plays well, we could keep him as a better backup option for the season in case of injury (and even possibly sign him longer term for that role, which I also consider unlikely if he plays well enough for some team in need of a QB to sign him).

You seem to be viewing this as if it is relative to Dak in some way. I don't think it is. The front office has been saying this whole time that it plans to extend Dak. I think Jones just saw it as a chance to get a first-rounder to possibly improve our depth or create value and see how it goes from there.

100%. Lance wasn’t some grand plan - it was simply Jerry’s flawed 2nd round methodology. At least he burned a 4th round pick instead of a 2nd rounder. The seemingly dumb thing is the $ cost since Lance is on a 1st round salary.

 

[Jimbo123]

Lance is the same age as most of the quarterbacks in this draft. The kid was a 20 year old rookie. Lance should have transferred to a bigger school and actually played his last season NDST did him dirty.

No big school would give him a scholarship as a QB. He was viewed as a defenseback prospect by big schools.

 

[Bobhaze]

I think there would have been a lot of press and Jerry outrage by fans if our figurehead GM force fed Lance to McCarthy. From my rusty recollection it seemed that McCarthy was excited about getting Lance in the quarterback fold. Tony Romo sat on the sidelines for several years before Parcells put him out on the field. I hope Trey can show up in pre-season, maybe Rush will get a starting opportunity elsewhere and Trey can directly back up Dak. I can dream, can't I.

Whether good or bad, everyone can decide for themselves. Here are some links to articles that get into Jerry not telling Big Mac about this trade:
https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/...arthy-i-can-make-that-trade-in-5-minutes/amp/

https://www.si.com/nfl/cowboys/news...ance-trade-mike-mccarthy-dak-prescott-consult

 

[Jimbo123]

I partially agree with what you're saying, but I think we have a fundamental disagreement on what the free agency market for Lance would look like. If he were a free agent this year I would have to believe that a team like New England would throw him a 1 year $10M deal plus some incentives to take an audition year with them. No idea what the QB market will look like this time next year, but I have to believe there will be a couple of interested teams in him. I just dont see a realistic scenario where you keep him past 2024 without an actual path to compete for a starting gig.

I do think you have a chance to net a decent comp pick if he walks after this season though...

No team is going to give a 3rd string QB $10M. Zero chance of getting a comp pick..LOL

 

[Swagger]

Dude you had me until the Cooper rush comment he is not a starter he's not truly even one of the better backups we saw from 2023 me literally look how many backups had to come in and play some of the retreads like Joe Flacco play way better than Cooper rush... Cooper rush is the most overrated player on our team he goes five and one and yet people literally just gloss over the fact that he wasn't that good when he played we saw it he wasn't even safe with the football that's like the comment the man plays within the offense no he doesn't there's no evidence of that at all he played well enough while the team was smoking hot around him to win a game but still had our offense in the bottom ten of the league in almost every category....


Cooper rush wouldn't is never gonna get a starting opportunity let's just be real... But he could be traded for a backup position but the fact is no other team has ever taken him off our practice squad or when he was a free agent to even bring him in as a backup that is because they actually watched film differently then fat Cowboys fans who watch through they wanna get rid of DAK and think Cooper rush is better than Prescott.

So the better plan would be just to outright release Cooper rush after camp if you can't get a trade for him and give Trey his chance... In my opinion if we lost Prescott for a majority of the season like 10 games or out for the season,​

​

I don't care who your backup is we're probably not going anywhere so why not give Trey Lance all those games to develop and see what he's really got on whether you want to keep them in 2025 and beyond?? We already know what Cooper rush is he's a very average to below average back up they can win you a game or two if everything else is like smoking hot around him... There is no way last season if Cooper rush was starting without that run game the offensive line being shaky the defense finding ways to lose games he would have struggled to win one game...​

You misunderstand the point about Cooper Rush.

People regard him as utter garbage - he's a practice squad QB and the Cowboys beat a few good teams like the Bengals when going 5-1 with him starting which tells you...Prescott is irrelevant towards the team's success as has been shown whenever the Cowboys play good teams in the play offs he has fallen flat on his face for 8 years.