In moving from Kyle Shanahan to Mike McCarthy as his head coach and offensive play-designer, Trey Lance finds himself in an unfortunate and uncomfortable position.
Lance, who the 49ers traded to the Cowboys on Friday for a 2024 fourth-round pick, goes from Shanahan, the greatest disruptor of defenses of his era, to McCarthy, who hasn’t been a primary shot-caller for years, and was consistently bailed out by Aaron Rodgers when he was. Kellen Moore was Dallas’ primary offensive shot-caller through most of McCarthy’s time as the Cowboys’ head coach, and he’s left to be the Chargers’ offensive coordinator. McCarthy’s most able offensive lieutenant now is Brian Schottenheimer, primarily known for designing run games.
When McCarthy was the Packers’ head coach from 2006 through 2018, he started off with an offensive design that was equal parts West Coast passing game and multi-formation run concepts. It was pretty cool. But over time, McCarthy reduced his playbook until all he had was a bunch of 11 personnel frosting and a cake made of the kinds of isolation routes and slant/flat purgatories that did very little to help his quarterbacks. Some have said since then that this is what Aaron Rodgers wanted, and he preferred to create on the field, but it’s hard to imagine any quarterback being happy with that.
I mean, you can go all the way back to 2015 to find evidence of half-baked sportswriters chronicling the difficulties inherent in that passing game.
The good news for Lance, such as it is, is that he’s third in line in the Cowboys’ depth chart behind Dak Prescott and Cooper Rush. And there’s no pressure for him to see the field sooner than later with his new team. That’s important, because Lance hasn’t seen a full season as a starter since he was with North Dakota State in 2019, and in this preseason and with the trade to Dallas, he showed that he’s not yet ready for prime time.
So, Lance will have that prime time to work on his game, and do everything possible to become a legitimate NFL quarterback.
The question is, who in the room will be able to help him on that path?