Trey Lance: Career, Stats, Contract History and What’s Next

Trey Lance — From No. 3 Overall Pick to Chargers Backup: The Full Story

Who Is Trey Lance?

Trey Lance is a 25-year-old quarterback for the Los Angeles Chargers who was once considered one of the most exciting prospects in college football. The San Francisco 49ers traded three first-round picks to select him third overall in the 2021 NFL Draft. Today he’s Justin Herbert’s backup, re-signed in March 2026 on a one-year deal worth up to $6.75 million. Those two facts sitting side by side tell you almost everything about what his career has been — and why people keep following it.

Early Life: Marshall, Minnesota and a Football Family

Trey Aubrey Lance was born on May 9, 2000, in Marshall, Minnesota — a small city of about 13,000 people in the southwest corner of the state. Football was in the household early. His father, Carlton Lance, played cornerback professionally for the Saskatchewan Roughriders in the CFL and the London Monarchs in the World League of American Football. That background shaped how Trey was developed as an athlete from a young age.

In high school at Marshall, Lance emerged as the best quarterback prospect in the state. The problem was that most major programs didn’t see it that way. Power Five schools recruited him as a wide receiver or defensive back — not a quarterback. He had the athleticism, clearly, but the bet on his arm was one most big programs weren’t willing to make. He eventually committed to North Dakota State in December 2017, an FCS program, not a Big Ten school. That decision looked fine at the time. By 2019 it looked prescient. His brother Bryce Lance is now a 2026 NFL Draft prospect, with the Seattle Seahawks connected to him in recent mock drafts — which makes the Lance family one of the more unusual football dynasties to come out of a small Minnesota town.

North Dakota State: A Season That Rewrote the Record Books

Lance redshirted in 2018 and played in just two games, rushing for a couple of touchdowns. In 2019 he was named the starter. What followed was one of the most statistically clean seasons any quarterback had produced at any level of college football.

He completed 192 of 287 passes for 2,786 yards, threw 28 touchdown passes, and did not throw a single interception across the entire FCS regular season and playoffs. That completion-to-attempt ratio without an interception set an NCAA record for passing attempts in a season without a pick. NDSU won the FCS national championship in January 2020, with Lance named the game’s MVP after a 28-20 victory. He won the Walter Payton Award as the FCS’s most outstanding offensive player and the Jerry Rice Award as the best freshman in FCS football. Both in the same year.

Then COVID hit. The 2020 season was postponed, and when NDSU played their lone scheduled game — against Central Arkansas in October 2020 — Lance threw for two touchdowns and ran for two more. He also threw his only college interception, ending a remarkable streak. The Bison were set to play a compressed makeup schedule in early 2021, but Lance announced he was opting out to prepare for the draft. He had played 17 college games total. That number would matter.

The 2021 NFL Draft: Three First-Round Picks and an Enormous Bet

The San Francisco 49ers wanted Lance badly enough to pay a price that made people wince. They traded up from pick 12 to pick 3, giving the Miami Dolphins their first-round selections in 2021, 2022, and 2023, plus a 2022 third-round pick. For a quarterback who had thrown 17 college games and one career interception, that was a franchise-altering commitment of draft capital.

Most analysts at the time projected either Lance or Alabama’s Mac Jones to go third. The 49ers chose Lance, the high-upside dual-threat option over Jones, the polished pocket passer. Lance signed his four-year rookie contract on July 28, 2021 — $34.1 million total, with a $22.1 million signing bonus paid immediately. He was the first first-round quarterback San Francisco had taken since Alex Smith in 2005. The expectations weren’t just high. They were franchise-defining.

San Francisco 49ers (2021–2023): Injury, Purdy, and the Worst Timing in Recent NFL History

Lance spent 2021 behind Jimmy Garoppolo. He appeared in games — a five-yard touchdown pass in Week 1 against Detroit, a rushing score against Green Bay in Week 3 — but Garoppolo was the starter. The coaching staff treated Lance as a project, which made sense given his experience level. What didn’t make sense was how quickly everything unraveled when he finally got his shot.

San Francisco named him the starter for 2022. In Week 2, against the Seattle Seahawks, Lance broke his ankle. He was done for the year. Garoppolo stepped back in, got injured himself, and a seventh-round pick out of Eastern Illinois named Brock Purdy became the starter. Purdy went on to lead the 49ers to the NFC Championship Game that season and became a Pro Bowl quarterback. Lance, meanwhile, sat on injured reserve watching the team succeed without him.

The 2022 numbers Lance put up before the injury — a 54.9% completion rate, five touchdowns, three interceptions, and 235 rushing yards across four starts — weren’t bad for a 22-year-old in his first real stint as a starter. They were good enough to wonder what might have been. But the injury erased the opportunity, and Purdy’s emergence erased the roster spot. In August 2023, the 49ers traded Lance to the Dallas Cowboys for a 2024 fourth-round pick. The return — pick 124, Malik Mustapha — says everything about how far his stock had fallen.

Dallas Cowboys (2023–2024): Two Quiet Years

Dallas was where Lance essentially went invisible. In 2023 he didn’t appear in a regular-season game. In 2024 he played in four, going 25-for-41 for 266 yards with one interception and 41 rushing yards on 11 carries. The Cowboys declined his fifth-year option — worth $22.4 million — and he entered free agency in March 2025. That’s not a failure, exactly. It’s more like a holding pattern. He was learning, staying ready, and waiting for an organization that believed in him differently.

Los Angeles Chargers (2025–Present): The Chapter That Isn’t Finished

The Chargers signed Lance in April 2025 on a one-year, $2 million deal. It was a low-risk bet on upside, and Jim Harbaugh — who has a long record of developing quarterbacks — was the coach. That pairing mattered. Lance started the preseason Hall of Fame Game against the Detroit Lions and completed 13 of 20 passes for 120 yards and two touchdowns. The box score was solid, but what caught attention was something harder to quantify: he looked calm. Confident in a way that hadn’t been visible in San Francisco or Dallas.

During the 2025 regular season he appeared in four games. The most significant moment came in Week 13 when Herbert fractured his left hand against the Las Vegas Raiders and had to leave mid-game. Lance stepped in, played eight snaps, completed a pass, and the Chargers won. Harbaugh told reporters afterward that Lance’s poise in an unexpected situation impressed him. In Week 18, with the playoffs seeded and Herbert held out, Lance started against the Denver Broncos. He completed 20 of 44 passes for 136 yards, threw an interception that became a pick-six, and ran nine times for 69 yards. The final score was 19-3. Denver’s defense was elite and Lance had 44 pass attempts in a game that was over early. It wasn’t pretty, but it was a real NFL start — his first in two years.

In March 2026 the Chargers brought him back on a new one-year deal worth up to $6.75 million. That’s meaningful money for a backup, and it reflects something: the organization likes having him around. Harbaugh’s quarterback rooms tend to be intentional, not accidental. Lance will back up Herbert again in 2026, turn 26 in May, and keep accumulating the reps and system knowledge he spent his first four NFL seasons being denied.

Career NFL Statistics

Contract and Career Earnings

Lance’s financial story is genuinely strange, and it’s worth understanding clearly. His rookie contract with San Francisco paid him $34.1 million over four years, with a $22.1 million signing bonus on day one. That money was fully guaranteed regardless of what happened on the field. When the 49ers traded him for a fourth-round pick in 2023, they ate the remaining value. Lance had already been paid.

By the time his current contract concludes, Lance will have earned over $42 million in his NFL career — for six starts and five passing touchdowns. The draft system created that outcome, not his production. He remains one of the better-paid backups in the league, and a strong 2026 season could position him for a legitimate starting opportunity in free agency come 2027.

Can Trey Lance Still Become an NFL Starter?

Honestly, yes — but the path is narrow and the margin for error is gone. He’s 25, which means 2026 is not some final act. Quarterbacks regularly don’t hit their developmental peak until 26 or 27. The physical tools that made him a top-3 pick are still there: the arm strength, the speed, the ability to extend plays. What’s been missing is reps. By the end of 2026 he’ll have made six career starts across five NFL seasons. That’s an absurdly low number for someone taken where he was taken.

The Zach Wilson comparison is worth making directly. Wilson looked finished after three years in New York. The Jets traded him to Denver in April 2024, he had a strong preseason under Sean Payton, and his career got new traction. Lance is following nearly the same arc, just one year behind. A year of weekly practice reps with Herbert and the coaching infrastructure Harbaugh has built in Los Angeles is the kind of environment that can actually develop a quarterback, not just store one.

There are real teams who could use him as a starter in 2027. The Vikings had J.J. McCarthy play historically bad football in 2025. Pittsburgh has cycled through Aaron Rodgers and a parade of veterans without finding an answer. Atlanta had Michael Penix tear his ACL and is rebuilding at the position. None of those are guaranteed destinations, but they’re realistic ones if Lance shows up in 2026 preseason games and looks like the player who threw 28 touchdowns and zero interceptions at NDSU. The ceiling exists. Whether he can reach it is the question that’s kept people watching for five years now.

The Lance Family’s NFL Legacy

Trey isn’t the only Lance heading toward professional football. His brother Bryce Lance is a 2026 NFL Draft prospect, and in a recent ESPN mock draft the Seattle Seahawks were connected to him — which would make two Lance brothers playing in the NFL simultaneously. Their father Carlton played in the CFL with the Saskatchewan Roughriders and in the WLAF with the London Monarchs. For a family from Marshall, Minnesota, a town most football fans couldn’t find on a map, that’s a football lineage worth noting. Bryce’s emergence has also given casual fans a new reason to pay attention to Trey’s career in 2026, whether they realize it or not.