Blake Bortles Dropping in Quarterback Rankings

The Jacksonville Jaguars have improved significantly from their 2013 campaign, and a lot of the credit, at least offensively, has to go to rookie quarterback Blake Bortles. Since being inserted into the starting lineup, Bortles has helped open up an offense that had difficulty moving the ball down the field consistently, stretching the field with deep passes, and converting 4th downs. Unfortunately, the good from Bortles also includes the bad, which means lots of turnovers at inopportune times.

As Luke Sims pointed out, this is going to happen, but he still makes the team better than they were with Chad Henne.

"At the end of the day he is throwing interceptions he is making poor reads and he’s struggling to adapt to the NFL as effectively as a top three pick ideally should.That said, it’s obvious that when compared to Henne he is making the team better."

Regardless of his overall effect on the team, it’s hard to ignore Bortles’ less than stellar statistics so far this season. His tendency to throw interceptions and his erratic decision making has dropped Bortles in Lyle Graversen’s weekly quarterback rankings.

"31. Blake Bortles – Jacksonville Jaguars (-1)Blake Bortles is making a strong push for taking over the bottom spot in these rankings. His league leading 13 interceptions are a problem and while I don’t put a ton of stock in Pro Football Focus’ QB rankings, Bortles -21.7 grade is pretty horrible when you think about the fact that it was over twice as bad as the second worst grade."

Bortles has definitely played worse over the last 3 or 4 games compared to his first few starts, but that’s to be expected with a rookie quarterback. With the ups come a lot of downs, and his downs have been especially egregious over the last couple of weeks. He’ll get better, but he’s going to continue to take his lumps as the season goes on. I expect him to be a lot closer to 16 than 32 in the rankings by the end of the season.

Even with his struggles, there are still plenty of people (more than 20,000) who think Bortles can run the state better than anyone else. Can you blame them?