Las Vegas Raiders quarterback Gardner Minshew once tried to break his own hand with a hammer in a bizarre tactic to prolong his college football career.
Minshew, who recently entered his sixth season in the NFL, spent his first college year with Northwest Mississippi before transferring to East Carolina in 2016.
With two senior quarterbacks ahead of him in the depth chart at the time, the Mississippi-born star was hoping to redshirt that season and start for the East Carolina Pirates the next three years.
However, when the two other quarterbacks were moved to a different position and injured respectively, Minshew came up with a plan to earn himself a medical redshirt and preserve his three years of eligibility.
Raiders quarterback Gardner Minshew once tried to break his own hand with a hammer
In a resurfaced interview on Barstool’s ‘Pardon My Take’ podcast from 2019, the Raiders man said: ‘I started kind of looking around at like what I could do and the options were, and the only thing I could do would be to get a medical redshirt. But if I played in the next game then that would be off the table.
‘So I get an idea. I go home, I grab a bottle of Jack Daniels and I grab a hammer. And I go back in my room, I take a pull of Jack Daniels, I put my hand back down on the table and boom boom boom, one two three, hit the hell out of my hand dude.
‘I’m sitting there shaking but I know it’s not broke, so I’m like god come on. Take another pull, one two three, do it again. Still nothing, I’m just shaking at this point man.Â
‘I knew it wasn’t broken. One more time, another pull, another three – and that was all I could take. I couldn’t break my own hand.
‘But when I told the guys I was like, what would you do for more football? Cause I’d do damn near anything.’
Minshew wanted to earn himself a medical redshirt while playing for the East Carolina Pirates
Minshew said he was left with a ‘swollen-a** hand for a few weeks’ and told coaches he had slammed it in a car door.
Yet he was still forced to play seven games that season, including two starts, before becoming the team’s full-time starter the following year.
The future NFL quarterback then moved to Washington State, where he spent a season before being selected by the Jacksonville Jaguars in the sixth round of the 2019 NFL Draft.
