What can we expect from Gardner Minshew vs. the Cowboys? | Yahoo Fantasy Football Forecast
With Jalen Hurts out in week 16, Yahoo Sports’ Scott Pianowski and Matt Harmon talk about how the Eagles backup QB will fare against the Dallas Cowboys.
Video Transcript
[AUDIO LOGO]
MATT HARMON: Eagles at Cowboys. Of course, the big question in this game is, what will Gardner Minshew do in the absence of Jalen Hurts? Scott, what do we think?
SCOTT PIANOWSKI: Yeah, for once, it's nice to go to a backup quarterback that we have a little bit of faith in. And so I put in the script-- you guys probably have no idea what this means-- I said, Minshew, PBI, 85%. PBI is the Pianow Backup Index, which is an unscientific percentage of how much efficiency an offense should retain when the backup quarterback is playing.
So I'm giving Minshew 85-- I'm saying the Eagles are about 85% as good on offense with Minshew. And then remember, last year, Dallas Goedert's best game of the season was the Gardner Minshew game against the Jets, caught a couple of touchdowns. The offense will be shaped differently. There won't be as many productive runs. Maybe it helps the touchdown equity for Miles Sanders, although he scored plenty of touchdowns, anyway.
All-- the main takeaway-- this is pretty obvious. I think you're going to get this from any Fantasy analyst-- but any Eagle you're going to play anyway, other than Hurts, of course-- you're going to play AJ Brown, of course-- but if you're waffling on Goedert or Smith or Sanders, I play all of them. And Minshew-- if you don't have Hurts or if you don't like some of your quarterbacks in bad matchups, bad weather, or whatever-- I think Minshew, in a wide range of outcomes, he could easily score 7 or 8 points.
But I think he'll probably be somewhere in, like, the 16 to 18 point range. It's such a safe landing spot, right? I mean, it's-- much like in San Francisco, where Brock Purdy has landed in this new SUV with all the trimmings on it, I feel like that's what the Eagles' offense is-- great offensive line, outstanding pass catchers. They just got their tight end back, and they have a proactive running game.
So I think Minshew has a good game. And I think your Eagles that you were going to play anyway, I still think you start them confidently. And I didn't make any major adjustments to the-- I know they're getting 5 and 1/2 points. It's a hard game to figure out motivation-wise.
What does Philly do, right? You can't send everybody to Aruba for a month. You'll be incredibly rusty. But you don't want to get guys hurt in games that you don't need. So that's a little bit of an X factor here. And the line is kind of funny.
I don't know how Dalton picked the game this week, but I am going to be proactive with the Eagles' offense. And I'm excited to see Minshew play. He's not Jalen Hurts. Jalen Hurts was the MVP until, like, 15 minutes ago. But I think Minshew is a good quarterback. I think he should be starting somewhere.