NFL Draft

Should North Dakota State QB Trey Lance opt-out or transfer in 2020?

Dillon Radunz North Dakota State
Offensive Tackle Dillon Radunz protects QB Trey Lance blindside for the Bison. Photo Courtesy of gobison.com

Trey Lance is the best small school football player in the country. There is no sugar coating it. We all know the kid is a first round talent and at this point, evaluators love the kid. Lance led the Bison to an undefeated year in 2019 and won the NCAA FCS Championship. Lance also brought home the Walter Payton Award for best FCS Offensive Player and he won the Jerry Rice Award for the best Freshman. Lance is only a redshirt sophomore at this time, but he is eligible for the 2021 NFL Draft.

With that being said and the entire FCS football Championship up in the air, we wanted to look at Trey’s options in the coming weeks.

So far, 47 of the 111 playoff-eligible teams are still regarded as being in for fall football, or 42%. In other words, FCS playoffs are likely to shut down, according to the recent NCAA Board of Governors memo.

The memo states that if 50% of the league cancels fall sports there will not be a Championship game. That is cool, but if these games do not get going what happens for Lance?

Lance right now is considered a first round pick by many draftniks. If he decides to stay and play in the spring, because at this point it is looking more and more like the FCS will shut down the Championship. Some divisions may still try to play in the fall, but will it be the same? Why should Lance jeopardize what he is riding on right now?

Think about it, NFL teams already love the kid, and they have only watched him play one year. There are question marks, but if he comes back to play in several games and does not do as well as he did last year, his stock could fall. So with that being said, Lance could hurt his stock, I DOUBT that would happen as he owned his conference last year, but it could happen.

If he transfers up, and god forbid he does bad (I doubt he would), he could also have some stock drop, this is an option and many other FCS standouts are taking this approach. I mean guys like Changa Hodge, Paul Grattan and recently D’Angelo Amos all opted to enter the portal. While I could see Lance doing this, I think it would be a dumb move, because the unknowns in this case help Lance.

If you were to ask me, if the FCS Championship is canceled and they are planning on moving the games to the spring, I would personally just opt-out and sign an agent. This is against a lot of what I personally believe, but this makes the most sense. The NFL will only have what he has done at NDSU already which they love obviously and they will have whatever combine he will do to evaluate him.

We know he can throw the ball with defenders in his face, but he will not have to play in an All-Star Game. He will not have to do anything but attend the Combine and hit guys in stride, that is if they have a combine. At this point, the best option for Lance is to opt-out if everything begins to go south. I would think he would be smart if he did so.

Damond Talbot

NFL Draft Diamonds was created to assist the underdogs playing the sport. We call them diamonds in the rough. My name is Damond Talbot, I have worked extremely hard to help hundreds of small school players over the past several years, and will continue my mission. We have several contributors on this site, and if they contribute their name and contact will be in the piece above. You can email me at nfldraftdiamonds@gmail.com

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