Jerry Jones had worst possible reason for baffling Trey Lance decision in Week 18

The 2024 season more or less ended for the Dallas Cowboys the moment Dak Prescott was lost to a season-ending hamstring tear back in Week 9. The assumption was that Jerry Jones, Mike McCarthy and Co. would use the back half of schedule to start planning for next season, and give themselves a look at backup quarterback Trey Lance. The former top-five pick has thrown all of 20 meaningful passes since 2022; why not give him a runway and see if he can tap back into the potential that made him such a coveted prospect?

Instead, it's been the Cooper Rush show, which has played out ... pretty much exactly as everyone expected. Rush hasn't been a disaster, but he also hasn't played particularly well. He's looked, in other words, like a backup, precisely the player that his entire career to this point had led us to believe he was. But no matter how badly Rush struggled, or how lost the Cowboys offense looked, Lance remained chained to the bench. Fair enough: Dallas' front office and coaching staff are the ones getting an up-close look at him each and every day; if they don't feel confident putting him on the field, maybe that tells us everything we need to know about Lance's career.

Or so we thought. As it turns out, the book isn't totally closed on Lance's Dallas tenure just yet: According to Ian Rapoport, it looks like Lance is going to "play his first significant snaps of the season" against the Washington Commanders in Week 18.

It's unclear whether that means Lance will start, whether he and Rush will alternate or what, but it sure sounds like Lance is going to get some extended run. Which is a baffling turn of events, one that doesn't seem to make all that much sense — until you realize it's just Jones finding one more reason to cheap out.

Jerry Jones, Cowboys find worst possible way to handle Trey Lance

This is really the worst of all possible worlds for the Cowboys. One game, at the end of the regular season against a Commanders team already looking ahead to the playoffs, isn't nearly enough to tell him what they need to know about Lance as an NFL quarterback. But it's also just enough to potentially coax Dallas into a bad decision: If Lance plays well and rides off into free agency, you can imagine the calls from Cowboys fans demanding that Jones bring him back next season and beyond.

There's virtually nothing but downside here. So why do it at all? We may never know for sure, but we do have one pretty good guess: Rush is nearing a $500,000 incentive tied to playing a certain number of snaps, a number he stood to clear if he played a full game on Sunday.

$500,000 is a drop in the bucket to the Cowboys, and yet it's apparently enough for Dallas to go back on the football decision it had already made regarding Lance. If he flops against Washington, it will be one more piece of evidence that Jones was foolish to trade a fourth-round pick for him. If he plays well, it will only cloud the free-agent picture entering a critical offseason. All when they could've just given Rush a small reward for stepping in under less than ideal circumstances.