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The development path for young NFL quarterbacks is brutal. They get lobbed in at the deep end as franchises try to figure out if their investment was worth it, before being tossed overboard if things go wrong. The league eats its young. The path from potential franchise starter to career backup – or out of the league – has never been shorter.
And that path has been expedited almost by design. In part, that’s due to the rookie pay scale, which allows teams to move on from perceived misfires early. It’s also down to a shift in evaluations. Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson broke the mold for everyone. They redefined what a starting quarterback could look like, the skills needed, and the speed of development.
College offenses had become too wide-open, too gimmicky, producing quarterbacks fluent in college football but not dialed into the mechanics of the NFL. So the league tried to fix it itself, drafting the rawest, most athletic prospects imaginable, then worrying about teaching them how to play quarterback later. It ignored that Jackson and Allen (the latter raw, the former not) played in pro-style passing games in college, lessening the learning curve when they entered the league. And trying to find the next Mahomes is like sifting through rec-ball leagues to find the next Victor Wembanyama.
There have been hits and misses. You know the names: Jordan Love, Justin Herbert, Zach Wilson, Anthony Richardson, Justin Fields, Trey Lance. All were chosen to fit the post-Mahomes vision of a modern quarterback.
Herbert and Love have been the success stories, though there is nuance. Herbert would be an ideal quarterback in any era – and has himself been the victim of an unstable environment. Love was allowed to slow-cook in the background for three seasons in Green Bay, backing up Aaron Rodgers. The rest have been whiffs. And all of them are candidates to join a new wave of success stories in the NFL: the reclamation project. Three of the early candidates for MVP this season – Sam Darnold, Baker Mayfield and Daniel Jones – are former first-round picks who were discarded by the teams who selected them, only to find success elsewhere with the benefit of a good system and professional experience.
Wilson is already potentially in his reclamation chapter, backing up Tua Tagovailoa in Miami. Richardson’s early flashes with the Colts have been tempered by injuries and an allergy to the specifics of the professional game. And then there’s Lance, perhaps the most compelling of them all.
Lance was meant to be the future for the San Francisco 49ers. He fit the mold: 6ft 4in with a live arm and wheels. The 49ers traded three first-round picks and a third-rounder to move up to draft him. Teams don’t traditionally stake that kind of capital on a maybe; they do it when they think they’ve seen the next one.
But Lance was always a mystery. He may be the purest expression of the NFL’s Josh Allen hangover – the belief that tools and temperament could overcome inexperience. Lance had started only a little over a season’s worth of games in college, winning a national championship at the lower FCS level before he left for the draft. He threw only 99 passes in high school. In college, he played at North Dakota State, a well-oiled machine that runs a stripped-down version of an NFL offense. In theory, that made him more ready than most project-style quarterbacks. In practice, it meant he had barely been tested.
Still, the college numbers sparkled: 2,947 passing yards, 30 touchdowns, just one interception; another 1,300 yards and 18 scores on the ground. The 49ers; timing felt right, too. Jimmy Garoppolo was fading from the plan. Drafting Lance was not just a swing for the fences on an unproven prospect. It represented a stylistic shift for Kyle Shanahan, the league’s most doctrinaire offensive coach. Shanahan had seen what was happening in Baltimore, Kansas City and Buffalo, and he wanted to keep up. He was looking for a quarterback who could marry together the rhythm-based roots of his offense with more vertical elements on the ground and through the air. Think of the Eagles on their way to the 2023 Super Bowl with Jalen Hurts. Lance, despite his slim resume, fit the bill.
It didn’t work. Lance’s rookie flashes were promising, if uneven. By Year Two, Shanahan handed him the keys. Two weeks later, he fractured his ankle and was done for the year. In his place came Brock Purdy. Shanahan pulled the Lance Experiment when it was clear Purdy was more than a fun story, and that he partly offered what the coach was looking for in Lance, but at a fraction of the price.
Being a draft “bust” isn’t just about that one player; it’s about the opportunity cost of picking that one player over everyone else. Redraft today, and the Niners could have taken Micah Parsons or Ja’Marr Chase with the third pick. If they’d stood pat in the draft and not traded up, they could have picked up Mac Jones, Shanahan’s initial preference in the 2021 draft and now, ironically, the 49ers’ starter while Purdy recovers from injury.
Two years removed from his draft, Lance was traded to Dallas for a fourth-round pick – a rounding error compared to the fortune the 49ers spent to get him. He barely played. When he did, he looked frazzled, unable to rev up to the speed of the league. In his final preseason appearance with the Cowboys, he threw five picks. Then, this past offseason, he signed a one-year, $6.2m deal with the Chargers to back up Herbert and put himself through Jim Harbaugh’s Quarterback Finishing School.
So far Lance has earned $36m in his NFL career – that means he has cost his teams a little over $7m per start. But if ever there was an ideal spot for Lance to develop, learn and become an asset rather than a dead weight, it’s the Chargers. Sitting behind Herbert, there is no pressure on him to perform, unless there is an injury. Harbaugh is one of the best developers of quarterbacks of his generation. Harbaugh can X and O with anyone. But like O’Connell, he understands that the development goes beyond the field. A year in Harbaugh’s kitchen could put Lance in poll position to be the next man up this offseason.
The league’s mistake wasn’t in seeking quarterbacks who could make magic. It was the belief that post-snap magic could serve as a cure all. Mahomes, Allen, and Jackson break defenses not because they color outside the lines, but because they’ve also mastered the subtleties of the position. They follow the script for 80% of snaps, then improvise on the remaining 20%. The NFL, seeing the fireworks, discounted the foundation.
Lance is a telling case. The Niners looked at his upside and moved on when it became clear how long it would take for him to be even a competent starter, if he ever could reach that level. They dealt away a young player partly due to his on-field struggles, but also to clear the decks for Purdy.
The pendulum is swinging back. Chasing the upside is exciting. But Darnold, Mayfield, and Daniel Jones have proven there’s value in experience – in having an adult in the room. They know how to get in and out of the huddle. They’ve seen every defense. They know where the blitz is coming from. They can change protections, get everyone lined up and ensure the operation runs smoothly. That, at minimum, is the job. But this season, they’ve been more than caretakers; they’ve been difference-makers.
Finding the next Darnold or Mayfield is the latest trend. The Jets took their own swing this year, signing Fields after he showed signs of life in Pittsburgh. He fit the model as a former first-rounder who washed out early for a poorly run franchise. But despite a solid outing against Cincinnati last week, Fields doesn’t look like he has the goods.
There will be others down the line. Richardson is the most likely. Bryce Young, maybe. Caleb Williams, if the Bears remain lost in the wilderness. Even Trevor Lawrence, if Jacksonville tire of waiting for his potential. Maybe it’s Mac Jones, who was hung out to dry in New England after a solid rookie season. Jones has turned his career around with the Niners, filling in admirably in place of an injured Purdy. He has shown enough this season that there will be interest on the trade market this offseason, though San Francisco will not give him away lightly.
From his draft class, Lance has become the forgotten man. Fields and Mac Jones have had a shot to start again. Lance is still waiting. His last meaningful snaps came this preseason, when he scrambled through the Hall of Fame Game and threw two touchdowns. “He hasn’t had a lot of game experience,” Harbaugh said afterward. “We’re trying to give him that, and he acquitted himself well.”
Lance is still just 25, younger than Saints rookie Tyler Shough, Bo Nix and Michael Penix Jr. “Twenty-five years old. Just in life, that’s the fat part of the bat. For a quarterback, that’s the fat part of the bat,” Harbaugh says of Lance.
The NFL has a way of crushing careers. You’re either the guy or you’re not. But the truth is that careers are rarely linear. Alex Smith took nearly a decade to find the right spot. Geno Smith disappeared, then resurfaced as a quality starter in Seattle. Mayfield was playing scout-team edge-rusher in Carolina before he became the Bucs franchise starter.
Lance showed Harbaugh enough in the preseason to win the Chargers’ backup job. He’s played a handful of mop-up snaps this season. If he’s needed down the stretch, he could play himself into a starting role elsewhere next year. Even a year on the bench, working with Harbaugh, offers more stability than he has had since college. He has struggled in the pros, but there’s an interesting player buried somewhere under the rubble.
Picking him up as the next reclamation project this offseason would be a nice win for someone.
