Can Blake Bortles Play Mistake Free Football?

There’s no question that Blake Bortles has the tools to be a successful quarterback. The Jacksonville Jaguars don’t have the tools to be a successful team in his first season with the team so don’t expect a whole lot of wins this season. Bortles needs to play essentially mistake free football to elevate the Jaguars over the opposition if the team is to win some games in his first season in the league. Can he do it? Can Blake Bortles really play mistake free football?

Better yet, do we want him to?

One of the great things about Ben Roethlisberger and Brett Favre is/was the willingness to just sling it. Bortles is more often compared to the former than the latter of the two, but I can’t help and think of some of the costly turnovers that Favre had thrown through his career when I look at Bortles’ mental mistakes. I don’t want to see Bortles move away from slinging it around the football field. It’s good for him to show no fear and take chances as a rookie. It shows he’ll take chances later on in his career when he has more experience and will make less easy mistakes.

Not all of Bortles’ mistakes have been his fault (looking at you, receiving corps) but sometimes he just doesn’t make a good decision.

If the Jaguars want to win football games right now then he will have to stop making bad decisions.

Honestly, at this point in his career I don’t think that Blake Bortles can play mistake free football. That’s fine. He’s a rookie. He shouldn’t be asked to play mistake free football. Right now he is showing that he can have a beautiful future with the Jaguars and that should make all of us happy.

Yet when I look at the scoreboard week after week and the Jaguars continue to fall even to mediocre teams like the Tennessee Titans, it can sometimes be painful to look at Bortles and think “if he hadn’t made that throw…” or some other thing. There are problems across the team (obviously) but the quarterback always draws attention.

This season we’ll be lucky to see a mistake free game from Bortles. It would be great, but we’ll need to keep that perspective as we watch Bortles continue to grow as he plays. I’m still holding out hope, though I wouldn’t trade his slingin’ style for mistake free football at any point in his career, I think. It’s just too fun to watch.