Looks like Gardner Minshew has been doing legendary things well before he got into the NFL.
The Jacksonville Jaguars rookie quarterback was recently on the “Pardon My Take” podcast this week and stated in his first year at East Carolina, he was suddenly vaulted from third on the depth chart to first.
He expected to not play at all that season, since two seniors sat above him in the pecking order. He wanted to redshirt and play three full seasons after the guys ahead of him graduated.
I played about a half and then we get in for the next week and the starter is going to be back,” Minshew said. “So I’m like, dang man, I just played a half. I really wasted a year on playing a half of ball. I was pretty pissed so I started looking around and seeing what I could do, what my options were. The only thing I could do was to get a medical redshirt. But if I played in this next game then that would be off the table.
That’s when he came up with an insane idea to hurt himself.
“I got an idea. I go home and I grab a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and I grab a hammer. I go back into my room and I take a pull of Jack Daniels, I put my hand down on the table and I—boom, boom, boom, one, two, three—hit the hell out of my hand. I’m sitting there shaking but I know it’s not broken. So I take another pull—one, two, three. Still nothing. I knew it wasn’t broken. So one more time, another pull, another three hits. That was all I could take. I couldn’t break my own hand.”
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Minshew stated he told coaches he slammed his hand in a car, with his poor hand having to be swollen for several weeks.
As it turned out, it was a good thing he didn’t break it. Minshew ended up acquiring the starting job.