With Prescott out, who will Dallas start?

FORT WORTH, Texas — The percentages of this yielding much are almost as good as the Cowboys making the playoffs, but at this point playing Trey Lance carries minimal risk.

A trade that was never a good idea now has the perfect chance to see if it can be salvaged. The hamstring injury suffered by Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott in their loss at Atlanta creates an opportunity they should not waste.

Cooper Rush will be the starting quarterback on Sunday when the Cowboys host the Philadelphia Eagles, and Lance will be QB2. Starting Lance would be an insult to the rest of the team, but playing him some is not.

The Cowboys are 3-5, and 7.5-point underdogs to Philly. They may win a game or two without Dak, but everyone with the team knows the score. The 2024 season has morphed into player development, and coach/talent assessment for 2025. The season is now about contracts.

The 49ers selected Lance with the third overall pick in the 2021 NFL draft because they thought he could play. The same team traded him three years later to the Cowboys for their 2024 fourth-round pick because they didn’t think he can.

The Cowboys were likely the only team to offer the 49ers anything in return for a player they were going to cut because they fell into Brock Purdy.

Lance doesn’t have the label, but he is one of the bigger busts in recent draft history. He’s had a few injuries to deal with, but he has appeared in a total of eight NFL games since he entered the league, zero with the Cowboys. His last touchdown pass came in 2021.

He has attempted 217 career passes, enough for the 49ers to believe they didn’t need to see No. 218.

There are good reasons why the 49ers drafted him. The Cowboys owe it to themselves to see those reasons, in a game that counts. The only real tape they have on Lance is from preseason games, and it’s not great.

Lance replacing Prescott as this team’s starting quarterback was never a realistic part of any scenario; Lance developing into a No. 2, or maybe a trade piece, had legs. Not big legs. Tiny legs.

They may as well expand the goal into seeing if Lance is a serviceable NFL player.

The Cowboys are not going to exercise the fifth year of his rookie contract, and thus far they have paid him to mostly watch football rather than play it. There was never a good time. There was never a need.

Now is as good of a time as any.

“Last year was a whole different story. I feel prepared if that opportunity (to play) does happen at some point,” Lance told reporters at The Star in Frisco on Wednesday. “I feel I’m in a real good spot right now, having a full year under my belt.”

Historically, rotating quarterbacks in an NFL game never works. It’s an idea born from desperate circumstances, and meh players.

In 1971, Cowboys coach Tom Landry did it but with quarterbacks who were Pro Bowlers. That season, Landry announced that Craig Morton would start the odd-numbered games, and Roger Staubach the even weeks. By Week 7, Landry scrapped the plan, and rotated his QBs after every play in a game at Chicago, a loss.

After that, Landry went with Staubach the rest of the season, and the Cowboys did not lose again en route to their first Super Bowl title.

Other than the star on their helmets, Rush/Lance share little in common with Staubach/Morton. The Cowboys are not going to win out here in 2024.

Cowboys coach Mike McCarthy does not need to try Landry’s idea, but he can do what Sean Payton did near the latter part of his coaching tenure in New Orleans. Starting in 2018, Payton used quarterback Taysom Hill in a variety of roles, including wide receiver and tight end. Hill started nine games at quarterback in New Orleans in 2020 and ‘21, and finished 7-2.

The Saints installed plays, and packages, for Hill.

No NFL team was going to win big with Hill as a starting quarterback, but he proved to be a productive NFL player. Hill, 34, is currently listed as the Saints’ backup tight end.

Lance has no future as a tight end, but maybe he has a future in the NFL.

The percentages aren’t great, but, at this point the Cowboys have nothing to lose but find out because their season is all but lost.

©2024 Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Visit star-telegram.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.