Are the Jacksonville Jaguars in denial about Blake Bortles?
By Daniel Lago
With the Jacksonville Jaguars seemingly standing pat at the quarterback position after free agency, are they in denial about how good Blake Bortles can be?
The Jacksonville Jaguars signed a handful of big names in free agency, opting to shop primarily on the high end of the defensive market. The result is the team now has what could be a dominant defense stacked with potential playmakers.
Negative Nancies however are quick to point out one problem with the current roster construction – the quarterback.
Yes, it appears Blake Bortles is going to be the starting quarterback of the Jaguars in 2017, but honestly what did anyone expect? There are no legitimate upgrades available in free agency (apologies to Jay Cutler, Mike Glennon, and the rest of the crop of middling passers) and pretending to bring someone in for a farcical quarterback competition wouldn’t fool anyone.
The Jaguars could still draft a quarterback, but the only way he would start over Bortles would be if he was taken in the first round and that seems highly unlikely at the moment.
So Bortles is the guy as we head into the offseason and luckily he’s been working hard to try and reshape his mechanics. Nobody knows if it will be enough to right his career, but he’s shown enough to warrant a legitimate chance in 2017.
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In what I would categorize as somewhat of a novelty piece, Dan Hanzus of NFL Network (not NFL.com, that’s for peons) used Bortles as the archetypal of example for
fan denial of a massive problem:
"Bortles represents a perfect example of fan denial. He was one of the very worst quarterbacks in football last season, and Jacksonville’s apparent decision to stay in business with the former first-round pick could ultimately spell doom for head coach Doug Marrone and general manager David Caldwell.But the fan in denial will hang on that front-office support and those 35 touchdown passes in 2015, ignoring the fact that too much of Bortles’ production that year came in garbage time. They’ll write off 2016 entirely and work under the assumption that new executive vice president of football operations Tom Coughlin’s grandpa-charm will act as a cure-all."
I was actually right there with Dan up until the second part of his snippet where he regurgitates the same erroneous assessment of Bortles’ stats in 2015. It’s become an easy line to toe at the this point but it’s lazy and just plain wrong. Bortles definitely piled up garbage-time stats in 2016, but a majority of his impressive stat line in 2015 came during viable parts of games.
Yes Bortles was bad in 2016, but to be fair – and this cannot be stressed enough – he was playing under literally the worst head coach in the history of football.
This kind of analysis was inevitable – everyone has braced themselves for this narrative that Bortles will fix his mechanical problems over the offseason. It’s much easier to just assume it won’t matter come the regular season, but I think there’s still a chance the fourth year quarterback can produce at a respectable level. That’s not denial… it’s realistic optimism?