Jacksonville Jaguars: Sunday’s loss shows the dilemma with Blake Bortles
By Billy Long
In a reality check loss to the Tennessee Titans, the bad Blake Bortles reared its ugly head for the Jacksonville Jaguars.
The NFL season is not one week long, and the Jacksonville Jaguars learned that the hard way on Sunday. After a blowout win over the Houston Texans in week one for the Jaguars, the Tennessee Titans rolled into town and gave Jacksonville the same treatment in the form of a 37-16 shellacking.
There were a number of things that went wrong in the loss for the Jaguars, but the main catalyst for the disastrous performance was the one thing that Jacksonville had to conceal for as long as possible to have a chance at success: the bad Blake Bortles showing up.
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Bortles didn’t exactly light up the stat sheet last week against the Texans, and it wasn’t an exceptional performance by the quarterback by any means. But what Bortles did do was avoid the costly turnovers and poor decision making that have been backbreaking for the Jaguars since he became the starting quarterback. That, in turn, resulted in a runaway victory for Jacksonville. On Sunday against the Titans, those crippling mistakes arose again for Bortles in the form of three turnovers (though the fumble is hard to pin on him), and lead to an inept offensive performance and a blowout loss.
And that is the dilemma the Jacksonville Jaguars have with Blake Bortles.
When Bortles protects the football and avoids dumb mistakes, the offense has shown it can find success and get into a rhythm. But when the bad Blake Bortles shows up, the offense turns into a fiasco and the team as a whole collapses.
If a version of Blake Bortles that played smart and managed the game effectively showed up more, than maybe you could live and die with him making some dumb mistakes. The problem, however, has been that a reliable and consistent Bortles hasn’t appeared remotely enough to be acceptable, and a turnover-prone, inaccurate quarterback has become Bortles’ common form in Jacksonville.
The Jaguars seemed to have hitched their wagon to Blake Bortles. But Sunday’s performance is yet another example that this type of play from your quarterback cannot be tolerated much longer, let alone for the remainder of the season.