The thing that is baffling about Minshew is that when reading articles about him at ECU, there were times when he was incredibly mediocre. He posted a QBR of 18.3 before getting benched in his first game last season, battled with another QB through the middle of last season until that QB was injured, looked good for a couple games before having an absolute clunker of a game against Tulane, played great against Cincinnati before finishing the season with a terrible performance against Memphis. Looking at last season, it's no wonder that nobody had heard of Gardner Minshew before he got to WSU. He was exceedingly mediocre and kind of looked like a poor man's Jeff Tuel.
Yet here he is, looking like a stud with people saying that he WILL be in the NFL. I don't know if it's simple maturity, luck that he's bonded with Leach or just that the coaches at ECU sucked, but he's a changed QB and I am grateful for it. He showed tremendous promise at juco and I hope he keeps doing that here too.
He went to ECU a former AIr Raid school with (Lincoln Riley, 3 people that would go on to WSU Nichol, Simmons, McGuire etc.) and they all were gone by the time he showed up. So he thought he was playing in the air raid and then all of a sudden he was playing in a single read offense by CutCliffe's former offensive coordinator.
Montgomery was named HC of Duke on December 13, 2015
He Committed to ECU on May 1st 2016.
So he never really saw what offense ECU was going to run, and it was a place that had a history of AIr Raid. I don't know what Montgomery told him, but I would guess that Minshew thought it would be similar to what Lincoln Riley who coached at ECU and was coaching Mayfield at the time would be doing.
In fact Dave Nichol was at ECU until 2015 and left in December to come to us.
He signed at Troy under Neal Brown another Air Raid guy and sort of left there looking for a better opportunity so he was always looking for an Air Raid offense to play in. Got to ECU and they switched it up. He tried his best to adapt and won the starting job, but it's like playing guitar your whole life and then being asked to play violin. Yeah they are string instruments, yeah they both make music, but it is a WAY different technique.
He had 1 year of eligibility left and was thinking about going to Alabama to learn how to coach and then the opportunity at WSU opened up. Here was his 1 shot. His 1 shot to show what he was capable with in the offense he grew up in, and it's pretty clear he is not interested in wasting that opportunity.
What we are seeing is how fit is so very important. If you've trained your whole life to be a great guitar player and someone hands you a violin you can try to make the best of it but obviously, it will be awkward at times.
He walked into Pullman and was given the guitar of his dreams and he hasn't stopped playing since.
