Blake Bortles better than Tom Brady? Hold on just a minute

Blake Bortles was apparently quite good on slant routes in 2017, performing better than Tom Brady by Pro Football Focus’ measurements.

Pro Football Focus published a graphic highlighting Aaron Rodgers’ insanely good passer rating on slant routes. Rodgers is always great at the slant and he was joined by the third-best in 2017, Tom Brady, and second-best Blake Bortles.

For those of you who actively dislike PFF’s system of grading and question their rankings, this may just be another drop in the bucket of wondering whether they even watch games.

For the everyone else who takes PFF’s system as a pleasant addition (although not always perfect) to the world of sports stats, this may simply be a head scratcher. Jacksonville Jaguars twitter instantly reacted in the predictably confused way. Perhaps no tweet better encapsulated that than our friends at Big Cat Country:

“Wait what?” indeed.

More from Black and Teal

• Jacksonville Jaguars should welcome Derrick Henry into the kingdom
• Jaguars Rumors: Trent Baalke seems to be getting respect now
• Bold trade proposal has Jacksonville Jaguars shipping LT Cam Robinson
• Jaguars News: This division rival might be making a big move
• Former Jacksonville Jaguars S Johnathan Cyprien: “New Profession, Same Standards”

Watching Blake Bortles over the last season, it would be incredibly surprising to hear that he had an incredibly impressive 125.4 passer rating on slant routes. It goes against the eye test in a big way, especially with some interceptions that seemed to come on slant routes.

While it is nice to think that Bortles could possibly be one of the best in the NFL at the slant route, many of us were more inclined to think like one fan and cringe. (if you weren’t cringing on most dropbacks then you must have already had a few too many or weren’t watching the games)

At best, this is an interesting factoid. Bortles’ apparent ability on slant routes certainly isn’t good enough to put him in the same conversation as Aaron Rodgers or as Tom Brady. Being good at slant routes also doesn’t make him the next greatest of all time.

That title, unfortunately, continues to belong to Brady.