Why John DeFilippo Wants Gardner Minshew to Have a Short-Term Memory

The Jaguars' offense will need a major bounce-back offense this week after their worst performance of the year in Week 6's loss to the New Orleans Saints.

Whenever an offense has a performance like the Jacksonville Jaguars’ unit had in Week 6 in a 13-6 loss to the New Orleans Saints, there is enough blame to go around for everyone. And for offensive coordinator John DeFilippo, he looks at himself first.

“Not the best performance by anybody, starting with myself. I did not feel like I did a good enough job of putting our players in a position to have success,” DeFilippo said Thursday. “Starting with me, there is no doubt I need to do a better job than I did on Sunday. That is our challenge going forward here: making sure our guys are in spots to be able to make plays.”

Most of the talk surrounding the Jacksonville offense this week is how rookie quarterback Gardner Minshew will respond after the Saints defense effectively game planned to take him out of the game. Minshew’s Week 6 stat line 14-for-29 passing for 163 yards with an interception and zero touchdowns, was his worst all the season, and his 48.28% completion rate was the lowest of his young career.

For the young quarterback to shake off the rust and produce against the Cincinnati Bengals on Sunday, DeFilippo thinks the solution is a simple one: have a short memory.

“That is the biggest thing as a quarterback in this league, as a coach in this league – you have to have short-term memory. If you do not have short-term memory, you are not going to last long in this league,” DeFlippo said.

“That has been my thing with Gardner this week and with myself. We have kind of teamed up together this week to have a short-term memory, to move on and to go play well against Cincinnati.”

Jacksonville’s offensive coordinator would obviously prefer for Minshew to not have many more performances like the one he had against the Saints, but he also knows it is the territory when it comes to young quarterbacks.

DeFilippo has been around a lot of rookie quarterbacks in past seasons with Derek Carr in 2014 and Carson Wentz in 2016. He knows how to roll with the punches, and he knows how to temper expectations.

“Guys go through this. It is a learning stage for these young quarterbacks and to think that a quarterback is going to go out every week and perform at an All-Pro high, high level. I think you are foolish to be quite honest with you,” DeFilippo said. “They are going to have bumps in the road, offenses are going to have bumps in the road.”

Minshew said earlier this week that DeFilippo more or less had the same message when he spoke to him after the Saints loss. It is important to use the struggles in the game as something to learn from instead of simply acting like the debacle never took place, he said.

“Just that it’s a learning experience. There are things we can all do better and we’re going to do better,” Minshew said Wednesday.

“So, we’re not going to hang our heads about it and we’re not going to be sad, or pout or whatever. We’re going to take that, learn from it, get better from it and move forward into this week.”

And with the short-term memory in mind, DeFilippo still wants his young quarterback to remember that he shouldn’t feel like he has to put the entire team on his back, especially not in his sixth career start on Sunday.

“You just have to make sure that these guys understand that they do not need to be superman every week to go out and win,” DeFilippo said. “We have plenty of players around him at every position on our offense to be able to go out and help him win a football game.”