I remember not rating Carson Wentz the same way others did because there was so little you could really know about him, aside from the obvious physical talents that he flashed. He played in the FCS, didn't play that many games, didn't even necessarily do all that well when he faced FBS opponents. It was like all the stuff people said about the lack of experience for Ryan Tannehill (or if you go back further Mark Sanchez), except even worse because it was at the FCS level. Carson got to the NFL, lit the world on fire for a year, but is now floundering, benched. He's not been handling the adversity or professional atmosphere, rumors often swirling about the way teammates regard him, which is one of the things you had to wonder about him coming from a place like NDSU. He's not shown the year to year consistency, which means he's not transitioned his physical talent into technical acumen and consistency that has to be achieved if you want to be consistent in the NFL. Again, these are things you tend to wonder about when you see a guy that doesn't have much experience.
So now we have Trey Lance. Comes from the same bubble of dominance over lesser opponents. Has even less experience than Wentz did, with Wentz himself having even less experience than Tannehill did, and remember Tannehill was (rightly) criticized on the basis of lack of experience. Lance is not as physically gifted as Wentz, particularly as a passer. He wasn't particularly impressive when he faced an FBS opponent. And that was Central Arkansas, it wasn't like Bailey Zappe marching into Jones Stadium and taking it to Texas Tech in their own house.
When I think of the boom-or-bust nature of the 2021 NFL Draft, something I've been talking about for a while, due to COVID and all the interruptions to business-as-usual, all the information gathering that hasn't happened, all the games and opportunities for accurately sifting the class that has been missed, Trey Lance is pretty much the poster boy for it. His picture should be on every cover of everything written about the 2021 Draft. He's the epitome of the relative black hole of information that teams and scouts face when trying to sort through the players and ID the most reliable assets.
I don't dislike Trey Lance at all. The first time I looked at him, I could point out the talent that would probably make him a 1st rounder. Same as I did with Wentz. Sometimes the risk analyst in me comes out, and that's what is happening here just as it did with Wentz. And I may end up looking like a fool for a while, just as I did with Wentz. If I were desperate for a quarterback, I'd probably roll the dice, just as I would have with Wentz. But if Lance ends up going Top 5 like Wentz did, I probably couldn't condone it.