Forget The Pool Boy, You Need To Worry About The Gardner

Last night was the yearly tradition of the two teams that nobody wants to see on Thursday night play against one another on Thursday night. The location? One of the premier hard drug abuse cities of the United States! Maybe I’ll just watch the Tulane and Houston game that Pat McAfee is announcing. Wait a minute.. that guy in the headband.. with the mustache. Is that Grey Albright? Now that baseball season is coming to a close it would make sense that Grey would finesse himself onto the Jaguars.

But it’s not Grey. It’s the man who is here to save the NFL. The man who works out in the locker room with nothing but a headband and a jock strap. And the man who’s going to make Nick Foles the two-time highest paid back up in the NFL. It’s Gardner Minshew. 

Minshew was already a must-roster option in two quarterback and superflex leagues. But is he actually playable now? The stat line wasn’t terribly impressive, but it was efficient. He took advantage of a short field and found James O’Shaughnessy for a touchdown pass before throwing a beautiful touchdown pass to D.J. Chark a little later. Minshew ended up with 206 passing yards, which is pretty pedestrian. But when you consider that this was his 2nd NFL start and he has the ability to scramble, it makes him interesting. After a tough matchup in Denver next week, the Jags have 3 straight games that could be tasty matchups for Minshew. The Panthers, Saints, and especially the Bengals do not provide much more of a challenge for Minshew than the Titans did.

It’s time to cut ties with Leonard Fournette if you can find a willing buyer. Fournette was horrible up until his 69-yard fourth quarter run in a very positive game script for the Jaguars. Your league mates probably saw the game too, so how do you sell him? His snap share! We all love a bell cow, plus he caught 6 passes. Fournette is somebody that I want to sell for some upside and I think now is the time to do it before the Jaguars visit Denver.

Elsewhere in the Jaguars’ offense, D.J. Chark did it again and he performs with efficiency. Chark caught 4 of his 5 targets for 76 yards and a touchdown while Dede Westbrook caught 5 passes for 46 yards on 9 targets. The target share favors Westbrook, but the production has favored Chark through 3 games. I joined B_Don on the podcast earlier this week and we both gushed about Chark. Your time to buy him for a good price is running out. 

Oh, Adam Humphries does play for the Titans, after all! Humphries came out of nowhere and caught 6 of his 9 targets (nice) for 93 yards. Delanie Walker also saw 9 targets and caught 7 of them for 64 yards. It was a decent garbage time performance for Walker, but it has to be frustrating for his owners to watch Mariota miss him wide open in the end zone TWICE. Marcus Mariota is easily a bottom 5 starting quarterback in the league and we have hours of tape to back up that assessment. 

I continue to not understand why the Titans drafted Corey Davis with a top 5 draft pick if they are never going to use him like the talented weapon that he is. I look forward to Davis’ next chapter in his career when he is targeted more than 4 times and by a better quarterback. 

I missed out on Derrick Henry this year and I regret it. According to his production from the end of last year to the beginning of this year, drafters that didn’t take Henry missed out of a big discount. Ever since the 99-yard run game, Henry has had no less than 80 yards rushing in any game. That is, until last night when he had 44 yards. But he still scored a touchdown. He still had a useful fantasy week against a tough defense in crappy weather. 

Going forward with this season, I expect the Jaguars’ offense to continue to find an identity while the Titans’ offense will flounder outside of Derrick Henry and Delanie Walker.