This week
Gardner is on the road against SEA. We project 214.3 passing yards, 18.4 rushing yards. The number comes out of a drive-level simulation of the game rather than a season average — it asks how many possessions his side is likely to get, what they do with them, and how much of that flows through him.
How much he's on the field
Across 20 games, Gardner has been on the field for 73% of his team's snaps. That's a rotational-to-starter share. It's the number most likely to move his projection week to week, because a swing of ten points of snap share moves everything downstream with it. The model weighs this above efficiency for a simple reason: snap share predicts next week better than last week's yardage does.
What kind of quarterback he is
Gardner has completed 318 of 493 (65%) for 3259 yards, 17 touchdowns and 13 interceptions — 6.6 yards an attempt. He's also run for 108 yards, which matters more than it looks: rushing production is the most reliable floor a quarterback has, because it doesn't depend on anyone catching anything. Yards per attempt is the number to watch: completion percentage rewards checkdowns, and a quarterback can complete 70% of his passes without ever threatening anybody.
His last 5 games
Over that stretch Gardner has 227 total yards. Worth noting: his snap share is trending down — 22% lately against 73% overall. Five games is a small sample in any sport and a tiny one in football, where a team plays seventeen times a year — so recent form informs the projection without overriding the usage underneath it.
How the model reads him
Every projection here is built the same way for Gardner as for a starter on a contender — simulate the game, then apportion it by role. No manual adjustments, no gut calls on who's due. The weighting behind it is proprietary and re-tuned on real outcomes; everything it produces is public and graded against the box score.
What we'd flag
Three things to carry. The season is seventeen games, so most trends here are small samples wearing a confident number. Game script rewrites usage — a team trailing throws, a team ahead runs. And injury news lands after we publish.