The 49ers knew they were taking a gamble in the 2021 NFL Draft when they traded up nine spots to take Trey Lance at the No. 3 overall pick. They were betting on Lance’s upside after he flashed dual-threat greatness at the FCS level in limited action due to COVID and his one-game junior season.
As we know now, the Trey Lance Experiment didn’t work, with the 49ers shipping him to the Dallas Cowboys for a fourth-round pick on Friday.
Matt Barrows of The Athletic joined 95.7 The Game’s “The Morning Roast” Monday to look back on Lance’s rocky tenure with the 49ers and where things went wrong.
“It only works if everything goes perfectly, according to plan,” Barrows told hosts Bonta Hill and Joe Shasky. “On paper, it was a good plan. All it took was one throw in which Lance’s hand went into the helmet of a Raiders player in a preseason game to sort of throw that plan amuck. That’s exactly what happened.”
Back on Aug. 29, 2021, Lance dropped back to pass and thumped his index finger on the helmet of a Las Vegas Raiders defender, causing him to miss the next week of practice. As coach Kyle Shanhan told reporters this summer, Lance had to re-work this throwing mechanics as a rookie and never got a fair shot at being full-go.
“That was just the first bad thing that went wrong,” Barrows said. “It was a series of unfortunate events that kind of left Trey Lance going into Year 3, basically where he was going into Year 1. The 49ers knew that he wasn’t going to get the reps (this year) – at least ideally, because there are two guys ahead of him, those guys could have gotten hurt as well – but it didn’t look like he was going to get the reps that he still needs with this team, which prompted the trade to Dallas.”
The finger injury was just the first setback Lance suffered as a rookie, as he also injured his knee in Week 5 against the Arizona Cardinals and was unavailable for the following two weeks. While the 49ers were ready to ride out Lance’s growing pains in 2022, he lasted just five quarters before breaking his foot/ankle and missing the rest of the season.
After getting beat out by Sam Darnold for the QB2 job in San Francisco, Lance has an opportunity to start fresh with Dallas, where he will be competing with Cooper Rush to be Dak Prescott’s primary backup this season.
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