2022 Fantasy Outlook: Trey Lance

I spend too much time thinking about football. I really do. There was a time when I followed basketball and baseball closely, but everything has been eclipsed by the pigskin. My hometown Avalanche won the Stanley Cup this year, and it was nice catching the series against the Oilers and the Lightning, but I barely followed them beforehand. That’s because I was too busy thinking about football.

And this was in May.

I just love football too much. I cannot help it. I suppose it’s to the point of addiction, but I’d argue we all have some crazy in us, and as long as we can funnel that insanity into an enclosed structure like a game, we’re all better functioning members of society. The realization of one’s insanity is the highest form of self-consciousness. That’s at least what I tell myself when I dive into Lamar Jackson’s stats when normal people are relaxing on the beach and enjoying the summer sun.

All of this is to say that, when I dove into the past decade of football, I noticed a lineage of young quarterbacks busting into both real-life and fantasy football stardom. And if you can catch them that breakout season there’s a very good chance you will win your league.

That imploding star-to-be this year is Trey Lance. He will win you your fantasy league this year. There’s just too much history to say he won’t.  

Why Trey Lance is a Fantasy League Winner

Since 2010, there have been five quarterbacks selected in the first round that rushed for at least 175 attempts in the final full year of their collegiate career. This delineation is important. A first-round pick means the team is highly invested in them and sees them as their quarterback of the future. 175 rushing attempts is significant too, as that generally means the play caller averaged about 15 rushing attempts/game. Not a lot of quarterbacks are able to hit this threshold. This club is only for the uber-talented. This is a benchmark we gauge current running backs, and the fact the quarterback is getting this much volume stresses the fact that both the collegiate and professional teams view them as a critical piece of their running game.

Those first four quarterbacks have finished their first complete fantasy season the overall QB3, QB5, QB1, QB7. Perhaps you’ve heard of them. They are Cam Newton, Robert Griffin III, Lamar Jackson, and Kyler Murray. The fifth quarterback on that list is Trey Lance.

Teams drafted these players in large part because of what they can do on the ground. They are the ultimate dual threats. They accomplish what every offensive coordinator wants to do, and that’s to place stress on the opposing defense. A major part of that first full year in the NFL relies on the run, precisely because it’s what those aforementioned players are so good at. Just look at the numbers in their first full season—and this is just rushing!

Lance also has one thing that sets him apart from this group, and that’s the offensive weapons at his disposal. Sure, Cam Newton had Steve Smith, but there wasn’t much passed that in the wide receiver room. No one in Kyler’s first year cracked 1000 yards receiving. Lamar had Mark Andrews and an often-injured Hollywood Brown. Robert Griffin III had Josh Morgan, Santana Moss, Pierre Garcon, and Leonard Hankerson. No, I did not just make up those names.

Lance on the other hand has one of the league’s best pass catchers in Deebo Samuel, Brandon Aiyuk, and George Kittle. Deebo put up 1300+ yards with Jimmy Garoppolo. Kittle hit this mark with a combination of Nick Mullens and CJ Beathard. Say what you want about Lance as a passer, but his pass catchers know what to do with the ball in their hands.

Like his dual-threat forbearers, Lance is coming into his first full season with the offense attuned to his strengths. This is why you have to throw out the two starts Lance had last year. 2021 was Jimmy G’s offense. The 49ers were not expecting him to go down, and they scrambled to get Lance up to speed. The plan all along was for this raw talent to not start his rookie season. You saw this too in 2018 when Joe Flacco missed the rest of the season with an inguinal hip sprain and Jackson was thrust into the starting role. Jackson was not stepping into his offense. He was stepping into Flacco’s. It wasn’t until there was a complete offseason with the staff re-working the offense with the tailored blocking schemes and run designs to fit Jackson’s strengths did, he go supernova.

And that re-tooling of the offense is exactly what the 49ers are doing this offseason. They’re reconfiguring it to Lance’s strengths: the deep ball and the power run game. This is also how you need to attack the cover-2 shell coverages that defenses are throwing at teams now to curtail explosive plays. It worked last year against the Chiefs because they couldn’t run the ball. The 49ers can. Hence the entire reason they traded up so much to get Lance in last year’s draft. To be successful in the NFL means being one step ahead of where the defenses are heading. This is why the Rams won the Super Bowl last year—they went out and got a quarterback that could execute down the field against those cover schemes that riddled Jared Goff. There’s more than one way to exploit those defenses. The 49ers are going to pound them senseless with their run game, and the skeleton key to unlocking the offense is Trey Lance. There’s a lot running on this for higher-ups in this organization. Successful or not, they’re going to give Lance every opportunity to succeed.

So, why’s Lance going so late? It can’t just be due to concerns on the interior part of the offensive line. Namely, it’s because we haven’t seen it before. He is 22 and came out of North Dakota State. He is a raw passer and he has started only two games in the NFL, and none of those has he gone nuclear. Sure. But neither did Cam, Robert Griffin, Lamar, or Kyler before they broke out. In fact, they too were cheap in fantasy drafts. Cam Newton was in the 13th round. Kyler was scooped up in the 10th. Robert Griffin and Lamar Jackson were in the 9th. Anyone who picked up those guys at that price was more than happy with their pick, and this is exactly the range Lance is going.

Getting a top-tier quarterback this late in the drafts means you’re set at running back and wide receiver. Perhaps you drafted a Travis Kelce or a Mark Andrews early. You have eight pics to fill those spots, and instead of drafting an early QB like Patrick Mahomes or Josh Allen you now have a competitive advantage against teams that did. This is why Trey Lance is a league winner. He has a high floor, the ability to be the overall QB1, and his draft price is close to negligible. Let us remember that a running quarterback is the ultimate cheat code in fantasy football. 500 yards on the ground is equal to 1250 yards in the air. The propensity for rushing touchdowns is higher, and his floor is even better in leagues with 4 points/passing TD. The Niners are going to have a great offense this year. There will be plenty of opportunities for Lance to tuck the ball and run. There’s too much at stake for this not to happen.