Why Blake Bortles Deserves Better

Blake Bortles has been taking lots of heat from the media, Jacksonville Jaguars fans, and most importantly, even some of his own teammates. Bortles is getting blamed for the Jaguars struggles recently and over the past few seasons and is wrongfully deserving of it. In this article, I will explain why Bortles is a perfectly fine quarterback and how he is being treated unfairly by the Jaguars organization and their fan base.

Bortles was selected 3rd overall in the 2014 NFL draft and was entering the league with extremely high promise and expectations. He played college football at UCF where in 2012, he led his team to a Conference USA East Division Championship and bowl victory. In 2013, Bortles led UCF to the championship of the American Athletic Conference, earning the league's automatic berth to a BCS bowl, the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl. UCF ended up beating Baylor 52-42. In the 2014 draft, Bortles was the first QB taken over future studs Derek Carr, Teddy Bridgewater, and Jimmy Garoppolo. Obviously looking back now, Bortles probably wasn’t the best QB option at #3. However, this doesn’t make him a bust or a bad quarterback. Some people may look at the rest of this article as petty excuses. I simply ask for you to take what I’m about to say into consideration.

Blake Bortles entered the NFL in 2014 and was handed the reigns to a 4-12 Jaguars team from 2013 with a rookie head coach in Gus Bradley. Bradley is primarily known for his work on the defensive side of the game as he was the Defensive Coordinator at Ft Lewis College (1992-1995), North Dakota State (1996-2005), and the Seattle Seahawks (2009-2012). Bradley was also the linebackers coach for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (2006-2008). Keep in mind Gus Bradley had little to no influence or control over QB situations in his past positions in the NFL and College. Basically, Bradley didn’t know how to handle a highly touted rookie QB and that potentially damaged Bortles’ start to his carrer and made him the way he is today.

Bortles was inserted into an offense with a hole at the RB position (Toby Gerhart was starting), and no wide receivers that registered above 700 passing yards in his rookie season. Bortles “role model” and mentor on Jacksonville to start his carrer was a bust QB by the name of Blaine Gabbert. Bortles threw for 11 TDs and threw 17 INT in his rookie season. Help really hasn’t come along the way for Jacksonville on the offensive side since Bortles entered the league, other than free agent bust Julius Thomas (who was just traded to Miami for an offensive tackle that just retired, a season after he signed with Jacksonville).

I will now discuss the situations that three successful quarterbacks were put into early on, and what factors contributed to their success. I will compare these situations to Bortles to potentially find out what Jacksonville did wrong.

1. Tom Brady

Obviously Bortles doesn’t even belong in the same sentence as Tom Brady in terms of greatness. However the point of this section of the article is to compare situations as rookies. Obviously Brady’s path to success is far different from Bortles and perhaps that is due to the group that surrounded Brady early in his carrer. When Brady entered the league, he was a low round draft pick which meant he wasn’t a highly touted QB and wasn’t given the reigns to Patriots immediately. This was potentially useful to Brady early on, because he got to learn from a 4 time pro bowler and Super Bowl Champion, in Drew Bledsoe. When Brady’s time came, he was inserted into an offense which contained the future all time receiving yard leader in Patriots history in Troy Brown (who had 1199 receiving yards in Brady’s rookie year), and a stud running back in Antowain Smith (1157 rushing in Brady’s rookie year). Brady also had Bill Belichick (who had already won 2 Super Bowls as a defensive coordinator). Brady threw for 18 TDs and threw 11 INT in his rookie year. This sounds like an ideal situation to be in as a rookie and obviously the Patriots handled this situation perfectly resulting in 5 Super Bowls since the Brady/Belichick era began.

2. Aaron Rodgers

Rodgers entered the league in another great situation. Rodgers was a later first round pick (24) who would spend his first 3 seasons in the league developing under Hall of Famer Brett Favre. When Rodgers time came, he was inserted in to an offense with Greg Jennings (1,292 receiving yards in Rodgers rookie year), a four time Pro Bowler in Donald Driver (1,012 receiving yards in Rodgers rookie year), and a young Jordy Nelson for the future. Rodgers threw for 28 TDs and 13 INT in his rookie season. Rodgers’ coach was offensive guru Mike McCarthy who, with Rodgers led the Packers to the Super Bowl in 2011. Again, the Packers developed Rodgers under a great QB for a few seasons which I’m sure helped Rodgers and made him as good a player as he is today. Remember, Bortles was rushed into control of the jaguars with no great QB to help him through the early stages of his carrer (Blaine Gabbert wasn’t a

great mentor).

3. Eli Manning

Eli entered the league in a very interesting way. As you probably know, the Chargers held the first pick in Eli’s draft but Archie Manning didn’t want Eli to play for a bad team. As a result, Eli was traded to the Giants for Philip Rivers (also in that draft class) and some picks. Eli played his first real season as a starter in 2005 and experienced some professional games in 2004. Most of the time however, Eli was learning from Hall of Famer Kurt Warner. In his first real season (2005), Eli was inserted into an offense with Plaxico Burress (1,214 receiving yards in Manning’s rookie year), a 4 time Pro Bowler in Jeremy Shockey (841 yards in Manning’s rookie year), and a star running back in Tiki Barber (1,860 rushing yards in Manning’s rookie year). Manning threw 24 TDs and threw for 17 INT in his rookie year. Eli’s coach was Tom Coughlin (who was known for offense) and this coach/QB combo won 2 Super Bowls together. Keep in mind Coughlin now has a job in Jacksonville.

Now, for the first time, someone who primarily works with QBs and has Super Bowl winning pedigree, will mentor Bortles and take him to the next level in his carrer.

In conclusion, this part of the article showed that the lack of a proper mentor and impatience by the organization caused Bortles to disappoint. However this doesn’t make Bortles a bad QB. The team surrounding him for his first 3 years has been nothing short of mediocre. The offensive line has allowed Bortles to be sacked 150 in 3 years (50 sacks a year average). That is an outrageous number! This may be the reason for Bortles 51 INT in 3 seasons. You could argue, Bortles didn’t have enough time to make a proper play due to the quality of Jacksonville’s offensive line. On the plus side, Bortles has thrown 3,000 passing yards every season except for his rookie year (2,908) and has thrown 69 TDs in 3 seasons.

This next part is completely hypothetical but should be discussed. If Bortles plays 12 years in the NFL at his current pace, he will have thrown 44,964 passing yards, 276 TDs and 204 INT. If this happens, he will have more passing yards and touchdown passes than some Hall of Fame QBs such as Joe Montana, Johnny Unitas, Steve Young, Troy Aikman, and Kurt Warner. I’m not saying that this will happen, however he is on pace to accomplish this feat. Jacksonville hasn’t done a great job of surrounding Bortles with talent on the offensive end with the exception of Allen Robinson until now. Now, he has Fournette to hand the ball off too, Robinson as a deep option, and a speedy Allen Hurns on the other side. They’ve tried to improve on the O-Line by picking Alabama stud Cam Robinson in the 2017 draft and they signed two of the biggest defensive names in free agency (Calais Campbell and AJ Bouye). Also, last year’s draft was outstanding for Jacksonville in terms of defensive talent. First round pick Jalen Ramsey is nothing short of unbelievable and second round pick Miles Jack is showing early promise. On paper, Jacksonville has just as good a team as anyone else in their division. However, they need to continue to be patient with Bortles and let him continue to grow, develop, and learn under Tom Coughlin. Fun fact, Bortles is the 26th highest paid QB in the NFL. Other team’s backups make money than him.

Now we are getting to the unfair part. For every team in the league, it has been common for GM’s and Coaches to be the scapegoats of failure. If the team makes a mistake, the first people to go are the coach and the GM. The organization doesn’t deal with the young, struggling QB before the coach/GM. I’ll give you an example. In the case of the Rams, Coach Jeff Fisher and GM Les Snead agreed to trade their first round pick this season and last season for the first overall pick in last season’s draft. With that pick they selected QB Jared Goff. Goff wasn’t rushed into starting but the team ended up 3-13 last season. The times that Goff did play, it was noticed that he was significantly worse than second overall pick Carson Wentz. The Rams fired Jeff Fisher as a result of this atrocious season and hired an offensive coordinator in Sean McVay as his replacement. Snead is on the hot seat and is expected to be fired if this season is a failure. Notice, nobody complains or talks badly about Goff in the process in the organization, from his teammates, and Rams fans. However, this situation is different from that of Jacksonville for many reasons.

After last season’s failure, Jacksonville fired Coach Gus Bradley and hired an offensive guru in Doug Marrone to replace him. The interesting thing about Jacksonville is that the organization and the fans have skipped a part of the blame spectrum. They don’t blame GM David Caldwell for his failures since 2013, they blame the 25 year old QB who hasn’t really gotten a chance to prove himself given the team provided to him by Caldwell. Caldwell is most definitely on the hot seat and could be fired if this season turns out to be a disaster. Marrone could care less, and doesn’t have to worry about job security. He won’t be leaving for at least another 2-3 seasons. Perhaps Bortles has become a scapegoat for Jacksonville’s recent failures and Caldwell is just buying some time. The hate and blame has shifted from Bradley to Bortles. Now, after a couple shaky pre-season games, the fans have grown impatient. Instead of the wait till next year mentality (preseason doesn’t matter) outlook, they believe Bortles is now standing in the way of a playoff run, when in fact he is the best option for the team at the position. Bortles is better than Kaepernick, Chad Henne, and RG3 who are the top QBs available right now. Currently there is a mutiny going on in Jacksonville in which the fans, and Bortles teammates all want him out. That is unfair given his circumstances that I mentioned previously.

All this doesn’t change the fact that the starting QB spot in Jacksonville is still wide open. If the Jaguars are to make a drastic move and release or trade Blake Bortles, they will automatically lose more games without him, than with him. If he does move on, the Top 3 teams I could see him going to are the following.

1. New York Jets

Not even Cleveland needs a QB more than the Jets right now. As a Jets fan I would be ecstatic if the front office were to trade a 2nd-3rd round draft pick and any QB on the roster in exchange for Bortles. This might not happen because they are probably tanking for Darnold anyway with the roster they’ve assembled this offseason. I could see them going 0-16 and clinching the #1 pick as of now. However if they get Bortles, that record might improve to 2-14, or 3-13. The Jets would still get a top 5 pick either way, however it would be more fun, as a fan, to watch Bortles over Hackenberg, Petty, or McCown.

2. San Francisco 49ers

This is another team that desperately needs a QB. New GM/Coach pairing John Lynch and Kyle Shanahan could use a franchise QB after passing up on Trubisky this draft. They have been linked to Kirk Cousins. However if that doesn’t work, a fresh start for Bortles could be helpful in rebounding his carrer and is an improvement over Hoyer. This is the most likely destination that I could see Bortles going. He would then join a 49ers hero in QB John Lynch and a great former OC in Shanahan. Keep in mind Shanahan almost won the Super Bowl this season and has drastically improved Matt Ryan’s reputation. He is now considered an elite QB and I believe he could do the same thing to Bortles.

3. Arizona Cardinals

This is another very likely situation. Arizona has Carson Palmer starting right now and he will most likely retire at the end of this season or the next season. They have no QB in the system to replace him and Bortles could be a perfect fit in Bruce Arians offense. I don’t see Arizona trading anything other than a 3rd-4th round pick for Bortles and no players so I don’t see this happening unless Jacksonville releases Bortles. If this deal gets done, Arizona could still keep up with Seattle in the NFC West. However, if Palmer retires and no suitable replacement is found, I could see Arizona declining in the standings very soon. Bortles could prevent that.

So there you have it. Bortles deserves better than his current Jacksonville situation. He can’t be blamed for Jacksonville’s recent struggles due to lack of mentors and unqualified offensive coaches. If a deal gets done, these three teams are certainly possibilities. We’ll see what happens but, if Jacksonville is smart, they will hold onto Bortles and could potentially make a run at the AFC South division title and/or a playoff run.