Trey Lance has been in the Cowboys’ system for nearly a year, but the former No. 3 overall pick has not gone through a preseason slate with his current team yet. While Lance joins most of the 2021 first-round QB quintet in being headed toward free agency, the Cowboys want to give the former 49ers draftee an extended look come August.
Set to resume a competition with Cooper Rush for Dallas’ No. 2 QB gig, Lance will likely see more time during the team’s three-game preseason slate. The Cowboys know what they have in Rush, who has spent almost his entire seven-plus-year NFL career with the team. As Rush goes into another camp with the Cowboys, he may be poised to wind up in an emergency role — thanks to another NFL rule change this offseason — in Year 8.
Although a recent assessment of the Rush-Lance matchup pegged the more experienced option as leading the competition for the backup job, that may well change once the team sets its 53-man roster. Lance is likely to be the second QB the Cowboys carry once they set their initial 53, The Athletic’s Jon Machota notes (subscription required).
The team is unlikely to put three QBs on its active roster, and Machota adds the former high-end prospect would need to “look awful” during camp and the preseason to not be Dak Prescott‘s top backup. This would stand to make Rush more of an insurance option, as the Cowboys hope their August 2023 trade pickup has another level to reach during their upcoming training camp.
It would be unsurprising to see the Cowboys prioritize Lance upon setting their roster, even if it came at the expense of Rush’s roster spot. Not yet a vested veteran, Lance would need to be exposed to waivers if the Cowboys placed Rush as Prescott’s only backup. Rush is a vested vet, and given his familiarity with the team, the former UDFA being open to sticking around as the emergency option on the practice squad seems realistic.
A number of teams will probably take this route, as the NFL has increased flexibility to stash a third-string QB on its taxi squad. While the 49ers’ experience in the 2022 NFC championship game prompted the league to reintroduce the emergency rule in 2023, its offseason rule change will provide teams more flexibility this year. Clubs can elevate a practice squad QB onto their 55-man gameday rosters as many times as they choose, which would allow the Cowboys to keep Lance from the waiver wire while Rush resides on their 16-man P-squad.
Joining Zach Wilson, Justin Fields and Mac Jones as 2021 first-round quarterbacks to be traded over the past year, Lance is tied to a $5.3MM guarantee. He spent the 2023 season as Dallas’ No. 3 QB, with the team carrying three on its roster last year. As expected, the Cowboys passed on Lance’s fifth-year option ($22.41MM) in May. Lance, 24, has not thrown a regular-season pass since September 2022, when a broken ankle led to the 49ers changing moving to a course that eventually involved Brock Purdy making a stunning leap from Mr. Irrelevant to productive starter.
Lance, who famously only started one season at North Dakota State due to the COVID-19 pandemic nixing the fall schedules for Division I-FCS teams, has only thrown 102 NFL passes. The emergency QB rule would allow the Cowboys the chance to effectively keep Rush as their backup come Week 1 — in the event Lance truly is not ready — but they plan to give the younger option every chance to overtake the 30-year-old vet in August.
For a guy like Lance that needs actual live reps, a true minor league system is what the NFL needs. Getting live game action for somebody like the Arlington team in the UFL would’ve done him some good.
Agreed! Football needs a true minor league. I think the brutal nature of the game keeps it from happening.
Part of the problem is the league would need each team to have a Minor League squad to play each week. Even if half the active roster is partaking in said games as well (not sure if many would because of injury concerns, by hypothetically), you’d still need a lot more than just a few extra PS players. If teams could combine rosters to create, say, 16 teams, it may work, but most likely what teams would want to develop is a QB, which is hard in a time-share situation.
@Dark that makes perfect sense. Maybe practice squads could have scrimmages? I don’t know if that would work either.
Smoke screen? Jerry, at his age, doesn’t need an experiment scenario in the QB room. He knows what he has in Dak and Cooper. By publicly feigning interest in Trey, he’s hoping another GM will see value and grab him at that 5.3 mil price tag?