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QB Trey Lance, DAL (1 Viewer)

I am just saying I doubt the niners are looking at him as an option.  He is the greenest and most inexperienced of the top 5 and he would need IMO 2 years just to get up to speed.  The speed difference alone will take him one year of starts.  And throwing him out there too early could ruin him.  San fran is built to win now and I dont think they have the luxury to try and groom a guy like lance.  Which is why I think they can pick Jones and start him this year if needed.
Agreed. 

Jones in SF seems perfect.

Lance doesn't seem ready to start on a contending team. 

I know nothing, but I still have a hard time thinking a team who can contend, trades up to take a project at QB when they could (possibly, we'll see) have drafted a legit solid starter at 12. 

Otoh, if Wilson goes to NY, and Lance to SF, I'd probably draft Lance before Wilson in FF. 

 
He completed nearly 67% of his passes and his TD:INT ratio was 28:0.

That's a zero at the end. 
Impressive for sure. 

Though it's mildly concerning that he passed less than 18 times per game, and had almost as many rush attempts as completions. Total nitpick, but that zero would mean more, imo, if he had played like Joe burrow, 35 pass attempts per game and in the SEC.

He could be great, but there are questions.

 
Impressive for sure. 

Though it's mildly concerning that he passed less than 18 times per game, and had almost as many rush attempts as completions. Total nitpick, but that zero would mean more, imo, if he had played like Joe burrow, 35 pass attempts per game and in the SEC.

He could be great, but there are questions.
No doubt. Absolutely.

But NDSU doesn't run anything close to an Air Raid type offense (even though they probably could have with Lance). Probably THE reason they're so successful is conditioning. They know how to grind their opponents to dust. If the score is close against NDSU in the 4th quarter - you're going to lose. 

 
The Athletic's Michael Lombardi reports the Washington Football Team could "unload all their picks" to move up in the NFL Draft and select North Dakota State's Trey Lance. 

"I think they love Lance. I don't think, I know Washington loves Lance," Lombardi said on a recent GM Shuffle Pod. "I think they're willing to go get him." The Football Team trading away a bunch of picks to move into Atlanta's No. 4 draft spot would upend the entire draft, changing plans for most teams outside the top five or six selections. Lance in Washington would hardly be ideal for Terry McLaurin, as the Football Team would most likely operate a run-heavy offense centered on Lance and Antonio Gibson. Even if he gets the Week 1 gig, Ryan Fitzpatrick could once again be usurped by a rookie if Washington lands Lance. 

RELATED: 

Ryan Fitzpatrick

, Taylor Heinicke

SOURCE: Burgundy Blog on Twitter 

Apr 9, 2021, 12:22 PM ET

 
What scouts say about NDSU QB Lance before NFL draft

Excerpt:

WHAT SCOUTS ARE SAYING

“He is the most instinctual quarterback in this draft. I watched him and thought, ‘There’s no way he’s only played 17 games as a starter.'”

“The stuff he does in the pocket is so unique, a Dan Marino-type guy. Either everything comes so naturally for him or he has the best coach in college football.”

“He feels traffic from either side. He has a knack for stepping up, sliding left, sliding right. He doesn’t raise it or drop it.”

“He’s so young physically and mentally at the position. But his upside is tremendous.”

“He’s not going to be ready to play. He has to get in early, stay late and take a ton of notes just so he can learn the NFL position.”

“He’s 6-4. He’ll be 240-245 when he grows into his body.”

“When all is said and done, he can be as good or better than (Trevor) Lawrence. He’s going to be a big, physical quarterback like Ben Roethlisberger.”

“He’s more of a thrower than a passer. He’s like a pitcher who’s only throwing 95 mph fastballs.”

“What they (the 49ers) should do is take Trey Lance because of the upside. He has the kind of things you want to work with.”

“He’s developmental. It’s going to take some time to get him ready.”

“He hasn’t played a ton of football, but he is a quarterback. He knows how to play the position. He could be the guy.”

 
ESPN's Mina Kimes said on NFL Live that North Dakota State QB Trey Lance has the highest ceiling of any QB in this class. 

Whether or not Lance (6'4/226) has the best chance to get to his ceiling is a different story, but the tools are undeniable. Kimes believes Lance's blend of arm strength and athletic ability give him the most potential of any QB in the class. Kimes mentions that Lance not only has the raw velocity and throwing distance teams love, but has also flashed some impressive touch alongside that arm strength, which is why his ceiling is so appealing. Expect Lance to be off the board on draft night sooner rather than later. 

SOURCE: Mina Kimes on Twitter

Apr 13, 2021, 5:17 PM ET

 
I've been on the Trey Lance bandwagon since he started at NDST. Probably their best QB since Wentz there. Has a range of good tools. Am I crazy to think he might be better then say Trevor Lawerence? 
lol yeah, I'd think it's pretty safe to say he's their best QB since Wentz. Wasn't there just one guy in between & he was drafted really late? I think Lance is a total boom or bust guy. A lot of comps I've seen compare him to Kapernick, though he seems to have better short area quickness and is probably better at reading defenses. Will definitely be interesting to see how it shakes out. I hope he becomes something, but you never know given the small sample size and level of competition. From draft pods I've listened to, it sounds like a lot of his missed throws are pretty bad too, but there's still development there so you never know. Fingers crossed. 

 
lol yeah, I'd think it's pretty safe to say he's their best QB since Wentz. Wasn't there just one guy in between & he was drafted really late? I think Lance is a total boom or bust guy. A lot of comps I've seen compare him to Kapernick, though he seems to have better short area quickness and is probably better at reading defenses. Will definitely be interesting to see how it shakes out. I hope he becomes something, but you never know given the small sample size and level of competition. From draft pods I've listened to, it sounds like a lot of his missed throws are pretty bad too, but there's still development there so you never know. Fingers crossed. 
I haven't watched him enough the last season. NDST games were always on when I was at work and I'd only get home in time to the See the Florida games. From what I remember he missed a lot of High throws 

 
If you took a QB in the 2nd round of a start 1qb league, who would you choose between Lance and Jones?  Personally I would take a chance on Lance.  I feel that even though he could bust, I like his projection for fantasy more.
Trey Lance. While Jones might be the “safer pick”, I far prefer the fantasy football upside that Trey Lance has with his mobility.

 
Morning sports update: Louis Riddick predicts Trey Lance could be the quarterback the Patriots trade up to draft

Excerpt:

The Patriots and Trey Lance: Of the projected top quarterbacks in the upcoming NFL draft, North Dakota State’s Trey Lance might have the highest ceiling in terms of potential.

While he only played in 19 games during the entirety of his college career, NFL analysts have praised his ability (comparing him to former No. 1 pick Andrew Luck).

Lance’s draft projections have varied, but ESPN’s Louis Riddick thinks that the 2019 Walter Payton Award winner might be the quarterback that teams begin to trade up to get when the 2021 draft begins on April 29.

Specifically, as Riddick pointed out during an ESPN segment on Thursday, it will hinge on what the Falcons do with the No. 4 pick.

“The fourth pick obviously everyone knows is where it all starts,” said Riddick. “If Atlanta doesn’t take a quarterback, then I think right away teams are going to get on the phone. Teams are going to say, ‘What is the point that we have to get to?'”

Riddick, who correctly predicted that the Patriots would be aggressive in free agency, thinks Bill Belichick will be active in trying to move up in the first round to pick a quarterback.

“New England gets [on the phone] I think for sure,” Riddick explained. “If Mac Jones goes at three like everyone expects, I think personally the guy who people will start moving up for and trying to get — a team like New England in particular — in my opinion, is going to be Trey Lance. I think that’s the guy people are going to target. That’s the guy a team like New England will target, and it is going to get real interesting. Because then the eight spot with Carolina, it does become a point where they’re trying to [trade] to because no one knows what Denver will do at nine.”

 
ESPN's Matt Miller relays that in informal polling of NFL insiders, North Dakota State QB Trey Lance was viewed as the second-best quarterback interview in this class.

Setting this up a little, Miller has been asking the question to various sources from September onward. The answer he received most-often in terms of interview shine was Alabama QB Mac Jones. An area scout at one point told Miller that his general manager thinks Jones is the smartest quarterback he has ever interviewed. We've known for a while now that Jones would ace this portion of the evaluating process. Far more interesting is that he is trailed by Trey Lance in Miller's estimation. And that's big, because Lance already checks off the athletic boxes with ease. Jumping up from NDSU, his ability to master next-level concepts and to process information at speed -- the mental side of things -- will go a ways toward helping determine the path of his pro career. If you're curious, the No. 3 interview behind Jones and Lance was apparently Sam Ehlinger. For what it's worth, Miller makes no mention of Trevor Lawrence, Zach WIlson or Justin Fields in this polling.

SOURCE: Matt Miller on Twitter

Apr 22, 2021, 1:51 PM ET

 
If you took a QB in the 2nd round of a start 1qb league, who would you choose between Lance and Jones?  Personally I would take a chance on Lance.  I feel that even though he could bust, I like his projection for fantasy more.
For FF, presuming a normal sized league and 1 QB, I don't think this is particularly close. Take Lance for the upside.  I like Jones, quite a bit really, but I don't see him in FF as more than a good backup in 12 team leagues. Lance has the chance to be among the best in FF.  In 2 start or SF, I might go with Jones as a safer pick. 

To quantify, I'd put the chances of Jones being a decent starting QB at around 60%, less than 10% chance of being a top 6 in FF. Lance I'm thinking 40% chance of being a decent starter, 20% chance of top 6. I'm probably high on all those but that's my thought.

If I'm the GM of a good team I think I'm taking Jones over Lance, but still not in the top 3.  (Depends on my coach's input but I'd be leaning Jones)

 
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Lance would scare the bejesus out of me. 

51:50 here they talk about Lance and give some great stats.  https://www.theringer.com/2021/4/21/22395141/the-nfl-draft-take-purge

27 starts ever.  High school/college combined.  Thats a concern

Run heavy offense in high school only 113 total passes in high school.  53% completion Thats a concern

319 pass attempts in college.  Thats a concern

Add all of that up and Lance is way behind the 8 ball and its going to take a long long time to get him up to speed. 

 
JohnnyU said:
Does NE have enough ammunition that Bill is willing to sacrifice to move up that high?
Do they have enough ammunition? Yes. Is Bill willing to use it? :shrug: And I don't think you can draw back to history to answer either. Sure, there's a lengthy past precedent of him not pooling assets together to throw one dart, but before last year he hadn't needed a QB. 

 
I haven't read the whole thread, but I haven't seen this discussed on this page at least. I believe this is what PFF had to say about Lance.

 

"Over the past two seasons, he ranks dead last in percentage of accurate throws beyond the line of scrimmage (44.1%) among the quarterbacks on this list. Not only is that the lowest mark, but it's the worst by a country mile — 7.5 percentage points. Comparing that to all first-round quarterbacks since 2017, it'd still rank last by a comfortable margin. And Lance did this by throwing to a tight or closing window at the lowest rate among that group."

 
Trey Lance is one of the draft’s bigger mysteries, but he has been well prepared for the NFL

On the surface, Trey Lance should not be the kind of quarterback an NFL team wants in the draft’s first round.

He’s just 20 years old, and despite being 6-foot-4 and fast with a powerful arm, he started just 17 games at North Dakota State, which plays at the Football Championship Subdivision level, and threw for more than 200 yards in only four of them. In the one game he played this past fall, he threw for an unimpressive 149 yards.

Among the criticisms of his game are inconsistent accuracy and a tendency to run too much. A few months ago, after hearing so much pre-draft acclaim for Lance, a former NFL general manager watched the one game Lance played in the fall (North Dakota State didn’t have a full 2020 season because of the coronavirus pandemic and instead has played this spring) and came away unimpressed.

“I don’t get it,” the ex-general manager said.

But in an NFL draft filled with uncertainty following a broken college football season, there are suddenly a lot of coaches and evaluators who think they do “get” Lance, seeing a player who might be the league’s next great quarterback if given a season to practice and learn. Some have suggested his combination of speed and arm strength makes him like Baltimore’s Lamar Jackson. NFL Network draft analyst Daniel Jeremiah compares him to another league MVP, the late Steve McNair. Projections have him going as high as third in the draft, which begins Thursday.

They base this belief on more than just his ability to throw 70 yards or run a blazing 40-yard dash. They believe in Lance because of his mind and because, despite his lack of experience and exposure, he appears more ready in terms of maturity and preparation than most college quarterbacks.

“He’s incredibly intelligent,” Jeremiah said during a recent conference call. “I’ve spent time with him, and I’ve talked to a bunch of teams that have spent time with him and have been kind of blown away through the interview process with him. The character, the work ethic, all that stuff is exceptional.”

The demands placed on NFL quarterbacks are immense. Play names can be 10 or more words long. Defenses are loaded with clever disguises, designed to lure unsuspecting passers into mistakes. When Carolina Panthers quarterback Sam Darnold spoke of “seeing ghosts” early in his career with the New York Jets, he was expressing a sensation felt by many young quarterbacks.

More and more, teams are looking first for quarterbacks who can process a tremendous amount of information quickly and make fast decisions. Lance, a lightly recruited quarterback and safety from Marshall, Minn., who did not draw any interest as a quarterback from big colleges, might be exactly the player they are looking for.

“He had responsibility in terms of protections,” Jeremiah said. “He had responsibility in terms of checks. So he had a lot more on his plate than most guys, especially in his first year as a starter.”

North Dakota State already has sent quarterbacks to the NFL. In the past five years, it has had two of its QBs drafted — the Indianapolis Colts’ Carson Wentz (the No. 2 pick by the Philadelphia Eagles in 2016) and the Los Angeles Chargers’ Easton Stick (166th in 2019) — and a big reason for that is the program’s associate head coach and passing game coordinator, Randy Hedberg. A small-college quarterback who started four games for the 1977 Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Hedberg demands a lot of his QBs, challenging them with concepts more common in the professional game than in college.

The North Dakota State offense is a West Coast scheme, heavy on the long play names found in a lot of NFL offenses. Hedberg said he wants his quarterbacks to “verbalize” those plays in the huddle, a departure from the no-huddle approach taken by many college teams of having everyone look to the sideline at a sign held up by an assistant coach. It forces his passers to look at the other players and repeat the play to them — a small facet of leadership that many young quarterbacks struggle to master at the next level.

Hedberg also requires his quarterbacks to call protections, identifying at the line of scrimmage all of the potential pass rushers and making sure they are blocked. This, too, is something many college quarterbacks aren’t asked to do and must take time to learn when they get to the NFL.

“I want them to know who’s not going to be blocked,” Hedberg said. “If we have a five-man protection and they bring six, he’s got to know who that sixth guy is so he can throw hot off that individual.”

While many college offenses are filled with plays where the quarterback only looks for open receivers on one side of the field, North Dakota State’s offense — like those in the NFL — is loaded with “full-field throws” that demand the quarterback scans the entire field when going through his checklist of options on each play.

Lance responded well to those challenges, Hedberg said. The coach still marvels at how well Lance read the defense in his first college start in 2019, recognizing a looming blitz and checking into a run play for himself that he turned into a 61-yard touchdown.

“Not a lot of young quarterbacks are able to do that,” Hedberg said.

And while the system has given Lance an early understanding of things he will have to do in the NFL, those who have worked with him say the reason they expect him to do well in the pros is how hard he studies, describing him as far more diligent about his preparation than most his age. This spring, while working with quarterbacks coach Quincy Avery, Lance pulled out the tablet he used to study opponents. In addition to film clips of defenses, Lance had photographed pages and pages of notes taken in intricate detail from his meetings and film sessions with North Dakota State coaches — something Avery sees only from the NFL quarterbacks he trains.

What impressed Avery the most, however, was the insight that Lance had into the defenses he faced, examining not just how a cornerback might position himself when covering a receiver but how that cornerback plays in relation to the other players in the secondary.

“The way he sees things and the attention to nuance and detail is unique,” Avery said. “He’s more advanced. There are NFL guys who don’t prepare as hard as he does.”

Lance seems to be obsessed with detail, even texting Avery each night before workouts to get the name of the field they would be using so he could examine the best routes to take for the next morning. Not that he had to worry about being late — Lance was always early to his workouts.

“I definitely detail my work. My preparation is something that separates me,” Lance said after his pro day in March. “Attention to detail at the line of scrimmage is something that I feel is one of my strengths.”

People who know Lance point to his father, Carlton, a former defensive back at Southwest Minnesota State and in the CFL and the World League of American Football, as having a huge impact on his development. Lance said in March that both his father and mother, Angie, played a big role. His parents “were always super realistic with me,” he said, telling him that his “words and actions had to match up.”

Carlton trained his son in the early years and in high school, and Hedberg and Avery both said Carlton taught Trey to look at the defense through the eyes of a defensive player — similar to how Bill Belichick coached a young Tom Brady. Doing so often gives a quarterback a deeper understanding of what a pass rusher or defensive back might do, looking for tiny tells in their body language.

“He can process at the line of scrimmage as quickly as anyone I’ve coached,” Hedberg said. “He can see protections and coverages very well.”

Those are things that might not be expected from a small-school quarterback with limited experience, but for Lance, they’re a big part of what has NFL teams paying attention.

“It’s going to be a bit more complex at the NFL level, obviously,” Hedberg said. “But I think he’ll learn that as he progresses through his time in the NFL.”

 
Anarchy99 said:
I haven't read the whole thread, but I haven't seen this discussed on this page at least. I believe this is what PFF had to say about Lance.

 
He scares the crap out of me.  I think teams know and see this and he falls on Thursday

 

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