What we learned in the NFL Week 13: Gardner Minshew turned up, Mike Zimmer probably got himself fired
Jalen Hurts missed Sunday’s game due to an ankle injury. His replacement, Jacksonville Jaguars castoff Gardner Minshew, transformed the Philadelphia Eagles’ offense in his absence.
Eagles’ head coach Nick Sirianni had adopted a run-heavy approach to complement the ground-based strengths of his typical starter. Over the previous five weeks, a 3-2 stretch that turned their season around, the Eagles ran the ball on 59.6 percent of their snaps. With Minshew in the lineup, they handed the ball off 29 times and dropped back 29 times before switching to a clock-grinding approach while protecting a 12-point lead in the fourth quarter.
The former Jaguar made the shift back to a balanced offense worthwhile. His impact, despite a limited receiving corps, was palpable. The Eagles averaged 0.047 expected points per play on designed passing plays in Weeks 1-12, owing largely to Hurts’ ability to scramble offsetting a 6.9 yard per attempt average (24th-best in the NFL). On Sunday, Minshew’s pass plays averaged 0.61 EPA/dropback. He was roughly seven times more valuable than opposing quarterback Zach Wilson, who had a pretty solid passing day of his own!
He needed only 25 passes to throw for 242 yards — the most the Philly offense has produced since Week 4. His 9.7 yards per attempt were better than any single-game mark Hurts has posted this season. Philadelphia’s 0.26 EPA/play was a 2021 best.
If you’re a visual learner, you can see the Eagles with an above-average run game and subpar passing attack between Weeks 1-12 here, via RBSDM.com:
Minshew’s play vs. the Jets moved Philly’s offense into that happy top right quadrant, so far to the right of the average dropback EPA/play it breaks the scale twice-over:
Pretty good!
Does this mean anything for the Eagles? Probably not! Minshew has often been a useful quarterback in a small sample size. It doesn’t get much smaller — or fortunate — than a single game against the Jets and their 31st-ranked passing defense. His passing chart, as efficient as it was, shows a heavy (and easily-scouted) preference for short passes to his right:
Consistency isn’t one of his strong points, either; he’s had nine games with a passer rating of 100+ over 24 starts. None of them have come in back-to-back performances. Still, when he’s clicking he’s capable of finding openings downfield and taking good risks, even if his accuracy isn’t ideal.
Another Minshew start could clear up any confusion. Philadelphia’s offense is a different beast with him at the helm, but his success Sunday may be a product of a bad defense and a team that spent much of the week prepping for Hurts if he’d been able to heal up in time. Minshew played well enough to deserve another chance, but with the bye week coming up, the Eagles remaining in the playoff hunt, and the heavy lifting it would take to shift from Hurts’ run-heavy offense into something more suitable to test Minshew, it seems unlikely we’ll see it.
This is a bummer, but a good problem for Philadelphia to have. It’ll have both guys under contract for 2022 at dirt-cheap numbers. While figuring out a dual-quarterback system is a fool’s errand, Sirianni may have an actual quarterback battle on his hands next August.
Minshew is a useful scrambler, but he’s nowhere near as effective as Hurts on the ground. And, if Sunday is any indication, he’s significantly more valuable through the air. The Eagles won Sunday because of that value. Time will tell if that’s a one-off against a bad team or something Philadelphia can build from in the future.