Gardner Minshew: Jaguars don’t have “selfish ambitions”

[Jaxson De Ville]

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The Jaguars are definitely going to be young. And they might not be very good at football. But at least there’s a sense of common purpose, according to their quarterback.

Gardner Minshew told Judy Battista of NFL Network (in an interview conducted before the release of Leonard Fournette, but after the purge of many other veterans) that he liked the chemistry he saw in camp.

“The biggest thing I like about our team right now is how together we are,” he said. “We do have a lot of young guys, but it’s a young core that’s kind of banding together. I don’t think we have a lot of selfish ambitions. I don’t think we have a lot of personal agendas.”

The Jaguars have had talent in the past, but not much of it remains. Between cornerback Jalen Ramsey showing up to camp in an armored car last year in an unsubtle search for a new deal, or franchise-tagged defensive end Yannick Ngakoue refusing to report and forcing a trade, things have been rather dramatic there.

Now, they could start as many as seven rookies, as they’re putting together one of the league’s youngest rosters.

Minshew’s far from a veteran, but the 2019 sixth-rounder does offer some semblance of hope for a team that might not have a surplus of it. They do have some promising offensive weapons including wideout D.J. Chark, but it’s very much a work in progress.

It also doesn’t take much reading between the lines when he says the young players are “leaving egos and selfishness at the door, just focusing on getting better.”

Whether that has a tangible effect on their record remains to be seen, but it’s clearly a different vibe around there.