Viewers of “Thursday Night Football” won’t just be watching a battle between Florida’s two East Coast NFL teams, they’ll also be treated to quite the facial-hair showdown. That’s because the game will feature two of the league’s most notably hirsute quarterbacks in Ryan Fitzpatrick of the Miami Dolphins and Gardner Minshew of the Jacksonville Jaguars.
On Tuesday, the pair of signal-callers traded barbs — but definitely not Barbasol — over their respective looks. After Fitzpatrick threw the first bomb, Minshew showed he could play a little defense before hitting his rival squarely between the numbers.
“I think the beard is a cooler look,” Fitzpatrick told reporters. “I think guys that grow mustaches a lot of times have patchy sides for their beards, so they just stick with the mustache.”
Informed of those comments, Minshew began by claiming he would let his facial hair “speak for itself,” but fortunately for sports-content purveyors everywhere, the second-year player decided to elaborate.
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“I think I’ve shown I can grow a beard with no patchy sides. But, you know, I’m going to have respect for my elders,” Minshew, 24, said of the 37-year-old Fitzpatrick.
“Especially when they’re much, much elder. Be respectful.”
"I can grow a beard with no patchy sides but you know I'm going to have respect for my elders especially when they are... much... much... elder"
Gardner Minshew responds to Ryan Fitzpatrick with some subtle heat pic.twitter.com/UI0Wu2rFYA
— Ben Murphy (@BenMurphyTV) September 22, 2020On the field, Fitzpatrick has gained respect for carving out a career even more improbable than his game-day look, in which his beard spills out from under his chinstrap. The Harvard product was a final-round pick by the Rams in 2005 who barely played in his first three seasons, but who went on to work his “FitzMagic” for the Bills, Titans, Texans, Jets and Buccaneers before winding up in Miami.
His eagerness to challenge opposing secondaries has also led to a lot of negative plays, which explains in part why Fitzpatrick has bounced around to eight teams in 16 NFL seasons. Meanwhile, Minshew, a sixth-round pick in 2019, is making a strong case to be a fixture in Jacksonville for years to come.
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Minshew has followed a surprisingly strong rookie season with a two-game start for the Jaguars that includes an opening week upset of the Colts and a close loss to the Titans, both unexpected showings for a team thought before the season to be a leading contender for the NFL’s worst record. Along the way, the former Washington State folk hero has posted a passer rating of 115.7, good for seventh in the league, and he also ranks fourth in completion percentage (75.4) and is tied for second with six touchdown passes.
In other words, “Minshew Mania” is in full effect in Jacksonville. That term has also been associated with him, which might rankle Fitzpatrick, whose long association with “FitzMagic” helped contribute to safety Minkah Fitzpatrick’s inability to trademark that term last year for his own benefit.
Instead, the Dolphins quarterback took the impending matchup with Minshew to again display a good-natured, self-deprecating sense of humor. He followed his comments about beards being “cooler” by saying of Minshew’s horseshoe look, “My wife appreciates the mustache trimmed up a little bit more. But she does hate the beard, too, so I guess that’s a lose-lose for me.”
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As for Minshew, he did indeed prove he could grow “a beard with no patchy sides” while quarantining in May. Not to be remotely outdone, though, Fitzpatrick’s own quarantine look went in all sorts of impressive directions.
When the two go at it on Thursday, Fitzpatrick will be trying to help his Dolphins get their first win of the season, after losses at New England — where he presumably shudders at the very thought of “Gillette Stadium” — and at home to Buffalo. Minshew, already the first quarterback in Jags history to start a season with a pair of three-touchdown games, will try to extend that streak to four overall, going back to the 2019 season finale.
However the Thursday night game turns out, it’s fair to say that neither quarterback is going into it worried about a close shave.
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