(10-18-2019, 09:54 AM)Cleatwood Wrote:

(10-18-2019, 09:44 AM)Caldrac Wrote: Bortles also ran his [BLEEP] off against Buffalo and picked up first down's when he could and didn't turn the football over. He also had more than just a few wide open TD passes against Pittsburgh. The defense started strong and then started falling apart late and he kept responding on offense. The coaching staff got overly conservative in New England and that's that. 

Once again, you just love being a contrarian but that's fine. We get it. NE's defense got shredded by a better overall offense and by a football coach that [BLEEP] gambled like 2, 3 times on 4th downs to win it. Hindsight is 20/20. But if I was willing to go back deep enough to see the comments during that AFC Championship run you were probably all aboard the "turning the corner" thing with Ba-la-kay Bortles mantra going on around here. 

And could you really blame anybody for that? What were they supposed to do after that year? Take Lamar Jackson? So he could have been absolutely [BLEEP] hammered behind a really, really poor offensive line in 2018? They can't predict everything.

How is it being a contrarian? lol

Bortles was terrible for the Buffalo game and to say otherwise is foolish. I mean he didn't even throw for 100 yards. He also didn't have "a few" wide open TD passes. He had 1. 1 TD pass in the Pitt game after the defense helped give the team a 28-7 lead. And that NE defense was bad. They gave up 254 and 2 TDs to Mariota in the playoffs as well and Mariota is garbage too.

The mistake was made in the 2017 draft by taking Fournette (who looks good now) instead of Watson/Mahomes. They chose Bortles and then doubled down on that mistake by giving him an extension.

My main point here is that this FO should give no one the confidence that the moves they make are the right ones. 1 winning season (in a year where they played backup QBs the majority of the time) in the past what.... 10+ years?

I am not 100% sold on the FO. It's give and take. I'll meet you in the middle on that. I agree with 2017 being more of a lucky break than anything, all the more reason to be bitter that the coaching staff took their foot off the gas against New England. The argument with Watson and Mahomes being the guys HERE that they are now over out in Houston and Kansas City though is debatable. 

You would still need a good coaching staff intelligent enough to look at those guys and say "Yeah, I can make an offense work around their abilities". Do you really have faith that Hackett would have figured that out? Or Marrone would have figured that out? I don't. I don't think the extension was a mistake. I think it was a show of good faith, and their faith betrayed them there. 

My idea of terrible is different than yours I guess. Bortles playing mistake free and running for first down's to sustain drives is better than Bortles throwing up 4 wounded ducks into triple coverage. I still think you're discrediting his efforts a bit in the Pittsburgh and New England games. And in reality, if the offensive line holds up physically in 2018, he may still be the QB here. For better or worse. 

They smoked the Patriots in week three. Everybody was [BLEEP] hyped about that on here. They looked the part. They looked strong. And then everything went to [BLEEP]. My only disagreement with the Bortles extension was them eating the $16M cap hit. They didn't want to wait until June to part ways to avoid that hit and they wanted to show they were serious about Nick Foles. 

I get it. It's a bad look to keep a QB on your team like that when it's a QB driven leauge. Not that Bortles would have landed a starting gig this year based on how he ended up in L.A behind Goff. But I get the reasoning as to why they did it. And as someone pointed out. BECAUSE of the failures with Bortles, Linder and maybe Norwell? They're dialing back their extensions. But Yannick WAS offered a deal. Jack WAS extended. And I believe they'll ultimately get Yannick down on paper for the next few years to come.

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