Days after naming highly-anticipated first-round pick Trevor Lawrence their starting quarterback, the Jaguars flipped fan favorite Gardner Minshew—who quietly compiled a 95.9 passer rating with a 66.1 completion percentage a season ago—to Philadelphia, where he’ll presumably battle Joe Flacco for the right to back up QB1 Jalen Hurts. While many were puzzled by the move—Minshew, at worst, would have to be considered among the league’s better fallback options—sports radio personality Colin Cowherd praised it as a stroke of genius, propping up Jaguars coach Urban Meyer for playing his hand “perfectly.”
Well, that’s certainly one way to look at it. Another would be that Meyer cost his franchise quarterback desperately-needed practice and preseason reps, instead giving those opportunities to a player he never intended on using. To suggest this was Meyer’s plan all along—motivating Lawrence by using Minshew as the proverbial “carrot on a stick”—is probably giving the former Ohio State coach too much credit. And even if his tactics “worked,” is that really cause for a victory lap? That’s a lot of hoops to jump through for a conditional sixth-round pick.
Listen to your favorite gameday hits on Audacy's Tailgate Rock station, and buy everything you’ll need for a killer pregame party here
Needless to say, Twitter wasn’t buying Cowherd’s convoluted theory, dismissing the notion that pitting Lawrence against Minshew helped the rookie in any way—or that Meyer ever had a plan to begin with.
Cowherd hasn’t always sided with Meyer (he was critical of the Jaguars signing Tim Tebow this offseason), though the two were colleagues at Fox Sports during the latter’s coaching hiatus, so perhaps some unconscious bias leaked into Cowherd’s tweet. Whether intentionally or not, the Eagles have assembled an impossibly good-looking quarterback trio headlined by Flacco, who was voted the NFL’s “most attractive player” in 2017.
Related
LISTEN on the Audacy App
Sign Up and Follow Audacy Sports
Facebook | Twitter | Instagram