Column: Call the Jaguars Starting Glennon What It Is — Not the Best Chance to Win

The Jaguars can continue to start Mike Glennon all they want, but it has become hard for them to continue by their belief that he is their best chance to win.

For the Jacksonville Jaguars, it likely doesn't matter much in the big picture what happens over the next month. They will of course try to win, but it is clear as day that the Jaguars' long-term future will be decided past 2020. 

With that said, let's call the quarterback position and its handling what it is. 

It won't matter by next fall who the Jaguars (1-11) start over the next four weeks, but it is still worthwhile to point out how the Jaguars have gotten themselves where they are. And 27 days from now, we will likely be reflecting on just how and why the Jaguars started Mike Glennon over a healthy Gardner Minshew II.

The Jaguars and head coach Doug Marrone have continued to give the cliched line that Glennon "gives them the best chance to win," but how can that be sold to the locker room, the coaching staff, or the fan base after Week 13? 

The answer is that it can't be. It is no longer an argument rooted in fact. The Jaguars have plenty of reasons to start Glennon over the next four games, but the notion that he is their best quarterback is a false one. 

"I think we’re going to look at Mike. We’re going to evaluate it, but I think we’re going to try to clean some things up for him and see how we can obviously do a better job. I think that I’m going to go with him. I think he still gives us the best chance to win as of right now so I’m going to stick with him right now for this week," Marrone said after the game.

This was a major shift from Marrone in terms of how he has handled the quarterback position. For each of the last several weeks, Marrone has declined to name his starter moving forward following Sunday's game. He didn't even announce Glennon in each of his last two starts until Wednesday. 

But on the day Glennon had one of the most uneven performances of any Jaguars quarterback this year, Marrone elected to change his previous strategy and throw his support behind his quarterback on a Sunday.

Marrone and the Jaguars can say Glennon gives them the best chance to win until they are blue in the face, but it has become increasingly tough to believe that Gardner Minshew II isn't the quarterback who gives the Jaguars that option. 

Yes, I know, many Jaguars fans in general are against winning any of the next four games in order to preserve draft position. But at the end of the day, this is still an NFL team that has worked tirelessly for months. Why have the players poured their entire lives into this season to be 1-11 or worse, or to see the team not start its best quarterback?

Glennon was surprisingly competent in Week 12 against the Cleveland Browns, throwing two touchdowns, making few (if any) major mistakes, and having a top-10 completion percentage over expectation for quarterbacks that week. 

But Week 13 was a different animal. Just like the previous week, the Jaguars lost a tight game that was essentially decided by the worth of a field goal. But while Glennon was a big reason the game was close a week ago, he is the biggest reason the Jaguars lost Sunday's 27-24 overtime thriller against the Minnesota Vikings. 

Glennon finished the game completing 28-of-42 passes (66.7%) for 280 yards, one touchdown, two interceptions, a fumble, and a safety. He recorded a rating of 73.5, 26 full points below Kirk Cousin's passer rating on the day.

Glennon's only touchdown of the day, though, was pure luck. It was a horrid pass over the head of his intended target that should have been intercepted but, somehow, was deflected and landed in the hands of Laviska Shenault.

"That was lucky. Got some luck, [it] went our way. But yeah, that wasn’t a very good ball and it was just all luck," Glennon himself noted after the game.

But things got worse for Glennon from there. He threw an interception to set up a Vikings' touchdown drive, fumbled on a third-down scramble in the third quarter, took a costly safety at the start of the fourth quarter, and then put the final dagger in the Jaguars' hearts by overthrowing Chark on a deep post in overtime. The airmailed pass landed in the hands of Vikings safety Harrison Smith, and the Vikings won on a Dan Bailey field goal shortly afterward. 

If the Jaguars don't want to start Gardner Minshew because of the irresponsible way he handled his thumb injury (they have not publically indicated this at all), then hey, that is understandable. What he did was wrong, especially considering the coaching staff was on the hot seat. 

If the Jaguars don't want to start Gardner Minshew because of his unique playing style and his unwillingness to stick in a pocket, then fine. Say so. 

But they can no longer say Glennon is the Jaguars' best chance to win. If he was, they would have beat the Vikings.