Emergency QB options for the Eagles if Jalen Hurts struggles, suffers injury
The in-house veteran backup: Gardner Minshew
If Jalen Hurts doesn’t have anything else, he has the support of his teammates, from the veterans to the undrafted rookies. That’s been proven constantly.
His teammates love him, so much so that it sometimes feels like any move Philadelphia makes to replace him will fracture the locker room, yet here we are. The Eagles brass has supported Jalen Hurts publicly, as they should. They’ve said all of the right things, but the stories of their dissatisfaction won’t subside.
Recently, Derrick Gunn hung out with Barrett Brooks and Rob Ellis on a July 8th episode of Jakib Media’s Sports Take, and he stated the Eagles are “not very comfortable right now” with where Hurts is in his development.
"I know it’s a controlled environment, and, like, I tell you guys all the time. I don’t get too hyped about OTAs, minicamp, and even training camp because it’s controlled, but when I asked a few people back in late May about where Jalen Hurts was in his progress, one person said ‘Let me just give you a scenario of what he went through in one day of practice. It’s a ten-play scenario. He had three picks, four incompletions, and three sacks’."
It didn’t take long for a response to be offered as A.J. Brown and Lane Johnson came to his defense on Monday.
No one should panic. We’re talking about May and we’re talking about practice. Still, if we reach an area of the season in which the Birds are struggling and/or losing games that they should be winning (and Jalen Hurts is a big reason why the losses are stacking up), Philadelphia’s brass may feel pressure to make a move.
We doubt they’d do it. Still, anything is possible. They’d have to recognize that, by doing so, they’d be acknowledging that the experiment is over. Once the decision is made to pull him, there’s no turning back at that point.
Hurts’ injury or benching makes Gardner Minshew the ‘next man up’. He was the starter in the aforementioned win over the Jets. He completed 80% of his passes (20 completions on 25 attempts), and he threw for 242 yards and stuck two touchdown passes in the end zone.
‘The mustache’ is fully capable of doing what you want a backup quarterback to do, win games if your starter is down. He’s even won as a starter, and he did it IN JACKSONVILLE which is no easy feat. The biggest question about Gardner Minshew is this. Can he deliver consistent wins as a starter during a 17-game season?
No one has the answer to that, and in all honesty, that’s why Gardner Minshew is a backup today.