The Jacksonville Jaguars are all in on Minshewmania and are counting on Gardner Minshew to take his game to the next level in 2020.
Speaking about the second-year quarterback, who emerged as a budding star after being selected in the sixth round last year, head coach Doug Marrone said he’s “excited” to see what Minshew can do.
“Obviously, we want to see a big jump,” Marrone said, per the team’s website. “We’re excited for him. It’s a great opportunity. He’s not going to change the way he is. He’s a hard-working kid who has a lot of potential. We’ve got to make sure everyone around him is doing their job and doing it at a high level.”
With this expectation comes a distinct challenge. The Jaguars will likely look quite a bit different offensively this coming season with offensive coordinator Jay Gruden taking over. The big challenge Minshew, and all other young quarterbacks, will have is that the offseason is currently canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and nobody knows when things will ramp back up to normal.
That being said, Marrone isn’t concerned about Minshew.
“Gardner works at a very high level, so I’m not concerned about that. He’s working extremely hard. He’s doing everything he can [right now]. I think we’ve just got to get him in here and start practicing at some point and see what he can do as far as with him and Jay and the system – and what he likes, what we’ve got to get him better at, improve at, then really work him on the things he did well – and really fine tune a lot of those things.”
Clearly, the Jaguars are confident in Minshew. They traded away Nick Foles for a fourth-round pick, after all, and don’t really have another starting-caliber quarterback on their roster.
Given the team’s brutal track record when it comes to team building, however, we’re not sure any of this will matter in the long run.