Trey Lance is starting his second season with the Cowboys in the same spot on the depth chart he occupied all of last year.
Lance was the No. 3 quarterback in Dallas after arriving in a late-August trade with the 49ers and he did not play a snap during the season. Lance went through a full offseason, training camp, and preseason with the team this year, but he didn’t move move up the ladder.
Lance was 73-of-113 for 662 yards with two touchdowns and five interceptions while running 24 times for 168 yards and two touchdowns in the preseason. That performance earned him some compliments from Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy on Monday, but McCarthy confirmed that Cooper Rush remains the backup quarterback to Dak Prescott heading into the team’s Week One game against the Browns.
Rush was with the Cowboys from 2017-2019 and returned after a brief stint with the Giants. He appeared in seven games last season and made six starts over the 2021 and 2022 seasons.
Unless things go off track for the Cowboys, those preseason snaps might be the last impression Lance gets to make on the field before becoming a free agent in 2025 and that doesn’t bode well for the third overall pick of the 2021 draft getting a shot at a starting job.