Blake Bortles Slides Down Quarterback Rankings

Jacksonville Jaguars rookie quarterback Blake Bortles has had a roller coaster of a season, but he’s started to settle down a bit after a 3 game stretch with 6 interceptions in weeks 6 through 8. Still the offense is struggling to consistently move the ball down the field, and part of the blame has to fall on the rookie quarterback.

In his latest quarterback rankings, Lyle Graversen has Blake Bortles 2nd to last at 31, only in front of Ryan Mallet, who has yet to start a game for the Houston Texans.

"31. Blake Bortles – Jacksonville JaguarsBlake Bortles stays steady at number 31 this week. If Mallett wasn’t making his debut he probably would have fallen to the bottom slot. I believe that Bortles is the future in Jacksonville, but when you’re leading the league in interceptions and have a Pro Football Focus grade of -26.7 it’s hard to make a case for Bortles beating many other QBs out."

I think Blake Bortles has improved his decision making in the last few weeks and, despite some meager numbers offensively, he’s progressing in the areas he needs to improve in. People make a lot of excuses for Derek Carr over in Oakland for not having a lot of talent around him, but Bortles isn’t exactly in an ideal situation either. The offense is without question the youngest in the league, with as many as 6 or 7 rookies on the field at one time. Outside of Cecil Shorts, none of his receivers have a lot of experience, and the offensive line just lost it’s best player in Brandon Linder. Moving forward, he’s going to need even more people to step up due to the loss of his favorite target in Allen Robinson. Besides Denard Robinson, who only emerged as a legitimate starting running back 4 weeks ago, it’s hard to point at any player on offense that’s helping Bortles out a ton.

I don’t know how many quarterbacks I would rank below Bortles, but I don’t think he’s the second worst starting quarterback in the NFL right now. We’ll see how he looks coming out of the bye week – I have a feeling he’s going to climb up these rankings over the final 6 games.