Ahead of 49ers-Cowboys, Trey Lance is the butt of the joke

Quarterback Trey Lance was traded from the San Francisco 49ers to the Dallas Cowboys back in August with the hopes of providing the former No. 3 overall pick with a fresh start. Unfortunately for Lance, his past in red and gold has come back into view — and not in the most flattering way.

It all started with a question to Cowboys offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer on Monday. Given that the Cowboys were a day removed from playing the Patriots with former Dallas running back Ezekiel Elliott — and Schottenheimer apparently joked about Elliott “spending some late nights” with New England coordinators — had the coach talked to Lance at all about the 49ers?

“Trey knows a little bit about what they’re doing,” Schottenheimer said with a chuckle and a smile. “The cool thing is, like I said, the [Cowboys] know them well. I know them well from being in Seattle. Trey knows them well. Like last week, it’s kind of in good fun and humor. We all use pieces that we have in place, but we don’t go too far into it.

“We can know exactly what they’re going to do, because they don’t do too much, and they’re still really, really tough to go against just because they’re so talented.”

The coordinator later added, “We’ll definitely talk to Trey. He knows a lot of the pieces going against them in practice, but it doesn’t always help, as we learned yesterday.”

Schottenheimer was obviously a little facetious at the start of his answer but ultimately provided important context that any sort of conversation with Lance would be part of a much broader strategy to prepare for Sunday’s game. However, that last line is what got the most attention. And how could it not? There’s something objectively funny about imagining the Cowboys being so desperate for a key to winning on Sunday that they turn to a guy who couldn’t find success on the Niners. Many on social media cracked jokes about this whole situation under the NBC Sports Bay Area headline, “Cowboys OC admits they ‘definitely’ will ask Lance for 49ers insights.”

San Francisco certainly seemed to think so. When a reporter asked defensive end Nick Bosa about the two teams knowing one another’s game plan, he couldn’t hold back a laugh when he said, “They have Trey, so I’m sure they have an idea.”

“I think the NFL is a copycat league and everybody knows pretty much everything,” Bosa added. “Obviously, game-plan stuff they won’t know and we won’t know, so there’ll be some surprises.”

Ultimately, Kyle Shanahan had one of the best zingers about this whole situation, telling reporters Wednesday he wants Schottenheimer to focus only on speaking with Lance.

“Hopefully he’s talking to him all the time and making them focus totally on that instead of the simple stuff of watching the tape,” the Niners coach quipped.

It’s worth noting that Shanahan still began his answer by pointing out Lance could reveal “as much as most coaches can” based on what they saw on game film.

When Lance was traded to the Cowboys, many in the organization wished him well and had high hopes for what the future held for him after an embattled start to his career. Understandably, those sentiments might have faded a bit this week, now that he’s on a big-name rival that the 49ers are preparing to take on.