In the end, the Cowboys pretty much caved to everything that quarterback Dak Prescott wanted in a new contract, which is certainly worthy of celebration. But there’s an offshoot of the Prescott deal that is sure to be taken up by observers of the team soon: What, exactly, was the point of the Cowboys trading away a fourth-round pick to the 49ers last summer to acquire Trey Lance if, in the end, Prescott simply got the deal he wanted anyway?
The idea of adding Lance made some sense from a Cowboys perspective when put in the context of Prescott’s negotiations. Acquiring Lance, the former No. 3 overall pick in the draft in 2021, would give the Cowboys leverage over Prescott. Dallas did not have to be desperate to re-sign Prescott—the Cowboys had Trey Lance as a potential replacement.
That would have made sense if the Cowboys had actually wrested some concessions from Prescott. Instead, he got all the up-front money he wanted ($80 million signing bonus), plus a short term that allows him to get back on the market for one more payday before retirement, and of course, the most money of any NFL player in history–$240 million with all but $9 million guaranteed.
As CNBC media and sports reporter Alex Sherman wrote on Twitter/X: “The 49ers trade for Trey Lance may go down as one of the worst in sports history … But the Cowboys trade of a fourth-round pick for Lance (which turned out to be Malik Mustapha) may be more strategically befuddling.”
Cowboys Missed a Chance to Take a RB This Year
It won’t matter much what Mustapha does this season or in the future for the 49ers, though he is listed as the backup safety on the team’s depth chart—the Lance trade was still a waste. The Cowboys could easily have used that pick address a clear need at running back. Tampa Bay’s Bucky Irving had an impressive debut on Sunday, and was chosen with the pick just after Mustapha was chosen in the fourth round.
Will Shipley, Ray Davis, Isaac Guerendo, Braelon Allen—they were all running backs who went in the fourth round after Mustapha. The Cowboys would have been much better off taking a chance on one of them than going through the entire Lance charade this past year.
And man, did they try to sell Lance. In May, coach Mike McCarthy had enormous praise for Lance.
“Young quarterback comes into a new system, so you got the learning curve, but now starting to get the timing with the routes,” McCarthy said. “He’s close to being a master of the system. He has a really high understanding. He’s communicating very well. He looks more and more comfortable. He just needs reps. I know I say that every time I talk about him. He just needs as many reps as he can.”
Trey Lance Could Not Win No. 2 Job
Those reps are not going to come in Dallas. Prescott was the quarterback when the Cowboys traded for Lance, and if Lance was acquired as a potential threat to Prescott, he swatted him away with ease.
What’s worse is that, in the coming year, the Cowboys figure to get no value out of Lance whatsoever. Despite a training camp and preseason essentially tailored toward making Lance a viable NFL quarterback, the Cowboys stepped back after watching him in action for two months and made Lance the third-stringer.
Cooper Rush, last year’s backup quarterback, remains the backup quarterback this year. The Cowboys could attempt to trade Lance ahead of the November deadline for deals, but given the fact that he will be a free agent in March, it’s hard to see any team willingly giving up value to add Lance.
It was a move that can surely be called strategically befuddling. But, in reality, there did not seem to be much strategy in place at all.
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