{"id":902991,"date":"2026-05-27T22:57:19","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T22:57:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/902991\/"},"modified":"2026-05-27T22:57:19","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T22:57:19","slug":"after-bonding-with-mike-lafleur-at-2019-senior-bowl-gardner-minshew-reunited-with-coach-in-arizona-with-cardinals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/902991\/","title":{"rendered":"After bonding with Mike LaFleur at 2019 Senior Bowl, Gardner Minshew reunited with coach in Arizona with Cardinals"},"content":{"rendered":"

Once Gardner Minshew II<\/a> was headed to the Senior Bowl in 2019, the quarterback’s hippie-adjacent personality was known around college football.<\/p>\n

But just as important to Minshew’s mindset was his drive to reach the NFL, so he reached out to 49ers quarterback Nick Mullens, whom he knew and who happened to play for Minshew’s bowl game coaching staff \u2013 including Mike LaFleur.<\/p>\n

Minshew called LaFleur before the week of practice to get a jump on the offense.<\/p>\n

“I didn’t know if it was going to be 20 minutes and I finally told my wife, ‘Cancel our dinner plans because he’s going to go for about four hours,'” LaFleur recalled Wednesday following the Cardinals’ OTA.<\/p>\n

“It absolutely made an impression,” said Minshew, who has been running with the first unit with Jacoby Brissett absent from the voluntary work. “That was something I was telling the younger guys here, you really never know when those connections come around.<\/p>\n

“At the time I was just trying to be more prepared for that game. It turns out it was a lot of the reason it got me the opportunity here. That’s awesome, man.”<\/p>\n

The Cardinals and LaFleur signed Minshew to a one-year free-agent contract in March. Since then, the team drafted Carson Beck in the third round while Brissett has stayed away while trying to get a reworked contract.<\/p>\n

Minshew as the starting quarterback isn’t something he’s thinking about \u2013 “I don’t know, man. I’m getting the reps I’m getting right now trying to do the best I can” \u2013 and is philosophical about getting playing time.<\/p>\n

It fits for the former sixth-round pick who has started at least eight games in four of his seven seasons and a total of five in his other three years.<\/p>\n

“All you really have is the work you put in,” Minshew said. “At one point, somebody is going to be better than you and they are going to play, and at some point you’ll be the best guy in the room and you’ll get a chance to play. All you really have is the opportunity to work, get better, and enjoy the guys around you.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Once Gardner Minshew II was headed to the Senior Bowl in 2019, the quarterback’s hippie-adjacent personality was known…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":902992,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2078],"tags":[375,390,2604,1327,1054,1051,7,8132,1053,1052,88,6],"class_list":["post-902991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arizona-cardinals","tag-arizona","tag-arizona-cardinals","tag-arizonacardinals","tag-cardinals","tag-darren-urban","tag-featured-articles","tag-football","tag-gardner-minshew","tag-home-page-news-headlines","tag-mega-feed","tag-news","tag-nfl"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116649016954891793","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/902991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=902991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/902991\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/902992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=902991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=902991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=902991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}