49ers trade Trey Lance: Is he better off in Dallas?
There’s no guarantee Trey Lance will ascend past No. 3 QB with Cowboys
Having been around a team that threw all of its chips in the middle of the table for JaMarcus Russell and came up empty, I’m well aware of the damage that can be done to a franchise that blows a premium draft pick on its future quarterback.
However, the 49ers are not the Raiders, and Trey Lance is the polar opposite of Russell in terms of commitment and dedication. In 2010, I was covering an Andre Ward fight at Oracle Arena when Russell, who had been released the year before, arrived fashionably late. The booing was so loud that Ward appeared perplexed as he wailed at an outmatched opponent against the ropes.
Lance was greeted by cheers from the home crowd at Levi’s Stadium the last time he played for the 49ers, in the second preseason game.
The Lance bet was a regrettable miscalculation — coach Kyle Shanahan and general manager John Lynch both admitted as much in postgame press conferences late Friday night — but it was far from the end of the franchise.
The impact on future years will be debated, but the agreement has no effect on 2023.
What happened to the 49ers in the 2021 draft (trading the No. 12 pick plus two future first-round picks and a third-rounder to move up to No. 3 and select Lance) and the 2022 draft (selecting Brock Purdy at No. 262) was akin to losing all of your winnings at the tables one year and winning the lottery the next.
The losses were heartbreaking, but they were greatly mitigated by the unexpected win.
The 49ers traded their No. 3 quarterback to the Dallas Cowboys on Friday, where he will remain for the foreseeable future.
Lance will not make a move for starter Dak Prescott. When Prescott was out with a broken thumb last season, Cooper Rush went 4-1 as a starter.
The Cowboys, like the 49ers, are thinking Super Bowl. They are coming off a 12-5 record. Prescott will handle all of the first-team duties, with Rush providing backup.
Lance’s desired fresh start also entails a fresh start in terms of offensive strategy. Unless Prescott and Rush are injured, Lance will not play any more than he did with the 49ers.
That’s why, on August 5, I argued Lance would be better off staying with the 49ers even if he lost the backup job to Sam Darnold.
Other thoughts on one of the NFL’s most publicized backup quarterback battles:
— Aside from playing for a coach in Shanahan who seemed to be hedging his bets on the pecking order, Lance needs to work on his slow start in preseason games and when given practice reps.
Lance’s few appearances where he actually looked good came after a shaky start.
— Under Shanahan and Lynch, the 49ers drafts are frequently like a golfer who misses the fairway only to save the round with difficult shots to the green for par or better.
Take, for example, Reuben Foster in the first round in 2017 and Fred Warner in the third round a year later. The 49ers selected Stanford defensive lineman Solomon Thomas with the third overall pick that year. In the fifth, they added tight end George Kittle.
Or taking Ohio State running back Trey Sermon in the third round in 2021, who was defeated in the sixth round by Elijah Mitchell.
The draft is a toss-up. It has always been that way.
— The 49ers had the foresight to select Nick Bosa at No. 2 overall in 2019, followed by Deebo Samuel in the second round and Dre Greenlaw in the fifth, so it’s not as if they’re incapable of snagging a winner.
— Adding star players isn’t limited to the draft: Trades that brought in Washington left tackle Trent Williams in 2020 to replace Joe Staley and do-it-all running back Christian McCaffrey last year landed standard bearers at their respective positions.
— Darnold is reviled in many quarters in the hyper-critical world of evaluating NFL quarterback play. But, like Lance, he was drafted third overall in 2018 and is still only 26 years old.
Lance never had a chance to develop because he didn’t take advantage of the brief window when he wasn’t injured. Darnold was the polar opposite, his formative years sabotaged by two terrible organizations, the New York Jets and the Carolina Panthers, each with four head coaches and five offensive coordinators.
Who’s to say Darnold won’t be a better quarterback after a year with the 49ers and putting the scars of his first two stops behind him in five years?
— The Cowboys’ situation isn’t exactly stable, and Lance will be scrutinized more in the Dallas-Ft. Worth Metroplex than he was in San Francisco.
Owner Jerry Jones, a longtime admirer of Al Davis, pulled off a classic Al move by acquiring Lance for a fourth-round draft pick without informing Prescott or head coach Mike McCarthy beforehand.
The ending of the Lance story, as Lynch stated, is unwritten. But it’s difficult to see the outcome in Dallas differing significantly from the outcome in San Francisco.
