I’ve seen a few different cases of fans angry at the shit talking towards Minshew, and I figured I’d try to explain what I think is the reason why.

A lot of the whining about minshew is because there was a very vocal set of both colts fans and broader nfl fans who were anti-Richardson and thought Gardner was better before the season and early into it.

The reason he’s getting a lot of vocal hating isn’t really because of him, it’s mostly in response to the anti-Richardson people. I was all in on getting AR predraft, he was my guy, and I’m a UK fan who watched Levis make our football team fun to watch for a couple years. After the draft the conversation got pretty annoying and even downright awful a lot of times, I had a family member say they were mad we took him because he “looked like a thug”.

AR was one of the most hotly debated 50/50 boom or bust prospects I can remember. Everyone who follows the NFL had a pretty strong opinion on him preseason. The fact that he looked so good so fast in his limited time, coupled with the fact that Gardner has had some struggles and generally not been the same level of player he was at Jax or Philly, is gonna lead to some victory lapping. With as crappy as the training camp conversations were it’s extremely vindicating to us Richardson ride-or-dies.

I don’t think he’s played super well, but I think it’s been good enough. Most times it feels like we’re playing good in spite of him and not because of him. The turnovers are bad, and his pocket presence is abysmal at times, which is arguably Richardsons greatest trait. He’s great with the RPO plays though, and he’s been good at getting the ball in the hands of our best skill players and letting them work.

At the end of the day, me and everyone else who were in the Richardson camp preseason are still rooting for Gardner. He’s quarterbacking our best team in a few years, and we know he’s capable of playing solid football. I’d love nothing more than for him to throw for 300 and 3 on Sunday and beat the breaks off the Tits. But we’re also feeling pretty convinced that we were in the right in the offseason, and we’re gonna victory lap a bit, Gardner is mostly just collateral damage.

TL;DR: Minshew hate is mostly a byproduct of the Richardson v. Minshew starter debates from preseason. We’re still rooting for him to play well, but Richardson fans feel vindicated that we were right about a pretty contentious topic. Dogpiling is mostly just to make it clear to other Colts and NFL fans that minshew is not as good as AR. Fuck the Tits.