What is Trey Lance’s future with the Dallas Cowboys? Will he play this season?

The Dallas Cowboys have been without their starting quarterback Dak Prescott since Week 9, and it’s been backup Cooper Rush who’s taken over duties under center. With their season already in the dumps by the time Prescott’s injury occurred, many thought it would be the perfect time to give a shot to third string quarterback Trey Lance.

The Cowboys traded for Lance ahead of the 2023 season in a head-scratching move. They traded the San Francisco 49ers a fourth-round pick in exchange for Lance, and did so after the preseason was already over. Since then, Lance has barely seen the field at all with the Cowboys, even after Prescott was ruled out for the season.

What lies ahead for Trey Lance

The Cowboys are coming off of a disappointing loss to the Cincinnati Bengals on Monday Night, a game in which Trey Lance didn’t play a single snap. The day after the loss, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones told 105.3 The Fan that he still is not planning to start Lance in their next game against the Carolina Panthers on Sunday.

“I thought for the most part, I thought we did some good things out there, and I still believe [Cooper Rush] gives us our best chance,” Jones said. “Wins are important for us, very important for us. This is a young team. Cooper, we think, gives us our best chance. We want to look at everything about [Monday] night and make sure the tale of the tape, so to speak, keeps us in the same mode. But it’s very important to go down and beat Carolina for this team next year. We’ve got a lot of young players out here that we want to get that experience. And so you have to consider that when you consider, if you will, evaluating at such a critical position, quarterback.”

Rush has 11 career starts and this season, he’s thrown for 1,191 yards and seven touchdowns. Lance has just four career starts and six total passes with the Cowboys. In the 2024 preseason, he completed 73 of 113 passes for 662 yards, two touchdowns, and five interceptions, plus 168 rushing yards and one rushing touchdown. With his running ability, you’d think the Cowboys might at least try to include him in that way somehow.

It’s not that I disagree with the choice of Rush over Lance, it’s that I wonder why they brought him on in the first place, and at the cost of a fourth-round draft pick, if they did not plan to utilize him. The Cowboys gave him a few snaps in the last month, but it wasn’t much of a game plan.

The Cowboys declined Lance’s fifth-year option and he will become a free agent in 2025, but the Cowboys say they don’t regret the choice to sign him.

“We’d do that again,” said Cowboys executive vice president Stephen Jones. “I mean, he’s a top-tier pick, a guy we had at the top. As you know, Dak was coming up for contract. We wanted to take a look at a good, young talent and didn’t feel like we could get anything, from a quality standpoint, like we could get with Trey. As it turns out, we ended up signing Dak long-term. Obviously, that puts a little less need, in terms of having to rush to do something with Trey. As a matter of fact, it makes it hard because Trey I’m sure is wanting to see what’s out there now that we have committed to Dak long-term, but I don’t regret that at all.”

Hopefully for Lance’s sake, whatever team picks him up next will actually give him a chance to make something happen for its offense.

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