The Dallas Cowboys’ 2024 season will conclude on Sunday at 4 p.m. Central Time. With the playoffs impossible, there’s not much left in their season other than playing the game. Yet even during a losing campaign, the franchise found a way to cover their tracks.
The coaching staff, led by Mike McCarthy, deserves credit for keeping the team engaged even though that fate has been all but inevitable since early November. Dallas started out 3-7, but they battled to four wins in their last five games, with the only loss being a fluke and a late miss on a special teams play. You’d think their elimination before Week 16 would have given fans a chance to get a glimpse of backup quarterback Trey Lance’s regular season.
Yet it 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 just two minutes left in the game. the competition. Lance threw a pass; A.
It remains to be seen whether or not he will have a real chance to prove himself.
Rumor has it that Lance will finally see “significant snaps” in this game after being an afterthought, even though the club has been out of the playoffs for some time.
Dallas sent a fourth-round pick to San Francisco in exchange for Lance, who was the No. 3 overall pick in 2021 to the 49ers. He failed to unseat Cooper Rush for the role of Dak Prescott’s backup and is just hours away from the end of his contract.
To make matters worse, Dallas added QB Will Grier from the practice squad to the 53-man roster, indicating he will likely see some snaps in the game as well, limiting Lance’s opportunities even though he is the Primary QB for this game.
THE Cowboys never tried to use his skills as a running threat, not even in the vein of how the New Orleans Saints deployed Taysom Hill over the years.
The offseason was a maddening experience for fans, as the club not only avoided signing impact free agents from the outside, but also failed to bring back many. With contract extensions looming for their biggest stars in Dak Prescott, CeeDee Lamb and Micah Parsons, the coaching staff was all at lame duck status.
Overall, this forced many fans to lose interest in the brand. However, one thing that united fans, especially as Prescott (at the time) approached 2025, was whether or not Lance had what it took to be the franchise’s next quarterback. . Acquired late in the 2023 offseason, Lance didn’t play that year, so no one really knew what to expect from him.
While head coach Mike McCarthy avoided playing his stars in the preseason, Lance got plenty of snaps in exhibitions and acquitted himself relatively well until the final performance where he bombed. He really hasn’t been seen since, which, in a lost season where Prescott was injured, frustrated fans even more.
Nothing crystallized this animosity more than in Week 11, when during a blowout loss to the Houston Texans where Cooper Rush struggled mightily, McCarthy refused to let Lance take snaps.
Now eliminated, the subject will finally be put to rest.
This article was originally published on Cowboys Wire: Is Trey Lance playing today? Update for Cowboys backup QB
