Lance will drop out to prepare for May draft

Trey Lance has officially declared for the NFL draft next spring. Lance announced his decision via an interview with Yahoo Sports last Tuesday. The decision means Lance will be dropping out of school and putting his full attention on preparing for the draft next May.

Lance is currently seen as one of the top three quarterback prospects in the 2021 draft. However, Lance has stated he believes he has the ability to overtake Ohio State’s Justing Fields and Clemson’s Trevor Lawrence and establish himself as a top-three pick.

On the outside looking in, the choice appeared to be a simple one. Lance has been touted as a potential top-15 pick for months now. Choosing to comeback and play in the NDSU spring season would mean Lance would miss being a part of the 2021 draft class, and would have to wait all the way until spring of 2022 to hear his name called.

However, on social media Lance stated that he wanted nothing more than to make another run at a championship with the Bison this fall. It took a global pandemic to prevent this from happening, so the NFL came calling and Lance took the opportunity to begin his next chapter.

Lance’s meteoric rise in the last year and a half is nothing short of remarkable. From winning the starting quarterback job as a redshirt freshman, to leading the Bison to the first 16-0 season in college football in over 120 years, to winning a National title, Lance was at the center of it all.

Lance’s laundry list of awards he won in his lone season as a starter is absurdly long. Besides winning the Walter Payton awards as the FCS’s best player, Lance was also a First team All-America, the MVFC Offensive Player of the year, the Jerry Rice award winner given to the top freshman in the FCS and was voted most outstanding player in the Bison’s national championship game win against James Madison.

Barring something completely unforeseen and Lance is drafted in the first round, he will join Carson Wentz as the second of the past three quarterbacks to start for the Bison to go in the first round, and will join Wentz and Easton Stick as the third Bison QB in the row to be drafted overall.

While Lance is on to the big leagues, the Bison football machine is scheduled to keep on rolling in the spring. Leading the charge at quarterback is senior Zeb Noland. Noland transferred to NDSU as a junior after three seasons at Iowa State. After playing sparingly as a Cyclone and hardly at all in his short stint as a Bison, Noland may get his chance this spring to finally be the guy and lead the Herd towards another title.