Minshew is confident the Jaguars want to win in 2020

The Jacksonville Jaguars will look very different in 2020. Gone are Leonard Fournette, Nick Foles, Yannick Ngakoue, Calais Campbell, Jalen Ramsey, A.J. Bouye, and Ronnie Harrison, all who were starters on opening day for Jacksonville last season. Coming into this season, Jacksonville will be a young team. With youth, sometimes comes struggles, which could be the reality for the Jaguars.

“Yeah, I think it’s a double edge sword,” Minshew said about the team’s youth on Thursday. “I think experience really does help you learn. I know from my last year, getting those reps is better than any classroom learning or practice learning that you can do. But I’m also very excited; I think with that youth comes a lot of energy, a lot of excitement, and not much ego. I think everybody is coming together in a great way. And more than anything, I’m just excited to get everybody out there for the first time and really see what we’ve got.”

As a second-year quarterback, Minshew is one the young players on the team, and according to Jaguars head coach Doug Marrone, Minshew has improved in many areas, including leadership.

“Just obviously from a leadership standpoint obviously, you see him trying to help his teammates more whereas last year, at this time, he was trying to make the team and not knowing where he stood with the roster,” Marrone said about Minshew. “He’s worked considerably hard over the summer for accuracy and all those other things that every quarterback works on. He worked extremely hard and has taken a ton of reps trying to get all that experience.

“The toughest part about that position is obviously you need a skillset to play that position but the toughest part for, at least in my opinion, is putting them in all the different situations that’s going to occur during the course of a game. You’re constantly trying to manage the emotion of the player wanting to [say], ‘Hey, listen, I’m going to put this thing in the end zone. I’m going to through it in here because we have to score a touchdown.’ [But, you have to say,] ‘Hey listen, if it’s not there and you don’t need a touchdown, check it down, and maybe we can run it in.’ I’ve seen him become much better at the decision-making process of [when] to extend the play, when to throw it away when to take the calculated risk. So the experience of putting him in those positions is something I’ve seen him improve upon greatly.”

After a few trades, which netted draft picks for the Jaguars, many believe that winning is not a priority for Jacksonville this season, but Minshew disagrees.

“I think people see it from afar and see, ‘Oh they’re losing their biggest names,'” Minshew said. “But, that’s not how we feel. And I mean realistically, I know if we’re tanking, Coach [Doug] Marrone, Dave Caldwell and [I] are probably going to be out of jobs. So, I know us three, and a lot of those other guys in the locker room are not going to let that crap happen. So, I feel very confidently in everybody’s desire to win, and that’s absolutely not anything that we envision happening.”

The odds are stacked against Jacksonville, and with all the changes, it should be interesting to see what the Jaguars will be in 2020.