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Former 49ers QB Trey Lance's NFL Career Might be Over

Ideally, Lance would pull a Rodney Dangerfield and go back to school.

Grant Cohn

Oct 27, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; Dallas Cowboys quarterback Trey Lance (19) hugs San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy (13) before the game at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kelley L Cox-Imagn Images
Oct 27, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; Dallas Cowboys quarterback Trey Lance (19) hugs San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy (13) before the game at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kelley L Cox-Imagn Images / Kelley L Cox-Imagn Images
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It's Sunday, March 23, 2025, and Trey Lance still hasn't signed with an NFL team.

He's a free-agent backup quarterback along with Joe Flacco, Carson Wentz, Drew Lock, C.J. Beathard, Case Keenum and Easton Stick. These all are quarterbacks who might not play in the NFL next season. Which means Lance's NFL career could be over.

Let's be realistic -- he's not waiting around for a starting job like Aaron Rodgers is. He wasn't even a second-string quarterback last season. He was the Cowboys' third-string quarterback. They played Cooper Rush ahead of Lance when Dak Prescott went down for the season.

It's also highly unlikely that a team would sign Lance to be their No. 2 quarterback. Those guys can't be projects. They need to be functional quarterbacks who can win a few games if the quarterback gets injured for a month. That's not Lance. He's not experienced enough.

So he could be waiting around to sign as a third-string quarterback. But if a team wants to take on a project, they might prefer to simply draft someone younger and faster who hasn't broken their ankle.

Ideally, Lance would pull a Rodney Dangerfield and go back to school for a few years so he can get the starting experience he needs. Unfortunately for Lance, the NCAA won't allow that.

So he has a choice. He can quit and live comfortably for the rest of his life -- he has been paid more than $34 million in his career.

Or, he can show everyone how much he loves football and how unfairly written-off he has been, and go sign a contract with a team in the Canadian Football League. And kick butt. That's what former 49ers quarterback Jeff Garcia did one time, and he went on to be a highly successful NFL starter in his 30s.

Let's see what Lance wants to do.

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Grant Cohn
GRANT COHN

Grant Cohn has covered the San Francisco 49ers daily since 2011. He spent the first nine years of his career with the Santa Rosa Press Democrat where he wrote the Inside the 49ers blog and covered famous coaches and athletes such as Jim Harbaugh, Colin Kaepernick and Patrick Willis. In 2012, Inside the 49ers won Sports Blog of the Year from the Peninsula Press Club. In 2020, Cohn joined FanNation and began writing All49ers. In addition, he created a YouTube channel which has become the go-to place on YouTube to consume 49ers content. Cohn's channel typically generates roughly 3.5 million viewers per month, while the 49ers' official YouTube channel generates roughly 1.5 million viewers per month. Cohn live streams almost every day and posts videos hourly during the football season. Cohn is committed to asking the questions that 49ers fans want answered, and providing the most honest and interactive coverage in the country. His loyalty is to the reader and the viewer, not the team or any player or coach. Cohn is a new-age multimedia journalist with an old-school mentality, because his father is Lowell Cohn, the legendary sports columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle from 1979 to 1993. The two have a live podcast every Tuesday. Grant Cohn grew up in Oakland and studied English Literature at UCLA from 2006 to 2010. He currently lives in Oakland with his wife.

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