The Dallas Cowboys 2024 season is will be over and done with by 4pm central time on Sunday. With the playoffs not a possibility, there isn’t much left to their season other than playing out the string. Yet somehow, even in a lost campaign, the franchise has found a way to muddy the waters.
The coaching staff, led by Mike McCarthy, deserves kudos for keeping the team engaged despite this fate being pretty much inevitable since early November. Dallas started out with a 3-7 record, but they fought for four wins in their last five games with the only defeat being a fluke, bone-headed late game screwup on a special teams play. One would think that their elimination before Week 16 would’ve led to an opportunity for fans to get a regular-season glimpse of backup QB Trey Lance.
Yet that didn’t happen against Tampa Bay in Week 16, and it barely happened in a blowout loss to the Philadelphia Eagles in Week 17, with only two minutes remaining in the contest. Lance threw one pass; one.
So there’s still a question of whether or not he will get an actual chance to prove himself.
The rumor is, Lance will finally see “significant snaps” in this game after being an afterthought even though the club has been out of the playoff picture for a while.
Dallas sent a fourth-round pick to San Francisco in exchange for Lance, who was the No. 3 overall pick in 2021 for the 49ers. He was unable to unseat Cooper Rush for the role of Dak Prescott’s backup and now is just a few hours away from the end of his contract.
To make matters worse, Dallas has added practice squad QB Will Grier to the 53-man roster, indicating he will likely see some snaps in the game as well, limiting Lance’s opportunity even if he’s the main QB for this game.
The Cowboys have never tried to utilize his skillset as a running threat, not even in the vein of how the New Orleans Saints have deployed Taysom Hill over the years.
The offseason was a maddening experience for the fanbase, as the club failed to not only avoid signing any impact free agents from the outside, but also failed to bring back many of their own. With contract extensions looming over their biggest stars in Dak Prescott, CeeDee Lamb and Micah Parsons, the coaching staff were all on lame duck status.
All in all, it forced several fans to be lose interest in the brand. One thing that united fans, though, especially under the looming 2025 of Prescott (at the time) was whether or not Lance had what it took to be the next franchise quarterback. Acquired towards the end of the 2023 offseason, Lance didn’t play that year, so no one really knew what to expect from him.
As head coach Mike McCarthy avoids playing his stars in the preseason, Lance got plenty of snaps in the exhibitions and acquitted himself relatively well until the final performance when he bombed. He really hasn’t been seen since, which in a lost season where Prescott has been out with injury has frustrated fans even more.
Nothing crystalized this animosity more than in Week 11, when in a blowout loss to the Houston Texans where Cooper Rush struggled mightily, McCarthy refused to let Lance get snaps.
Now eliminated, the subject will finally be laid to rest.