Quote:Sorry, I'm not an NFL coach, so I'm not able to tell you precisely what bad habits could develop.

 

It's not about him throwing picks, or being gun shy.  It's about being ready for the NFL level.  As a QB, he will be learning on the go.  Better to learn from doing when you're ready to start, than learn when you aren't -- that's when bad habits will develop.  That's common sense.  I'm not suggesting we protect him from failure.  Once he goes out there, I hope they certainly don't handcuff him like we did with Blaine Gabbert.  

 

Practice is like a swimming pool, while games are like shark infested waters.  When you think he can carry over in practice what you want him to, into real games -- that's when you put him out there.  You don't look at him and say "Look!  He's swimming better than Henne.  Let's toss in him the shark infested waters now!"  Because he might play better than Henne in a real game even -- but it might still not be the level he's capable of.  You want him to realize his potential.  Not for him to jsut be better than Henne.  That's not good enough.

 

He shouldn't just magically grow a new bad habit out of thin air. Like I say, if he starts doing that, we got the wrong guy. He will do stuff wrong and the coaches will correct it, this should happen whether he starts or not and this will continue for the rest of his career, it wont stop because he is the starter or better than Henne. The quality of this coaching and how he responds to it is what will define him as a QB. If anything, having real NFL game tape as opposed to glorified flag which he will play in practice should make coaching him easier.

 

As I see it, Blake Bortles is athletically superior in every way to Chad Henne. Bigger, stronger, faster, better arm. Chad Henne has been in this system a for a year and has been in the league for a while, therefore he has the mental advantage. At some point, Bortles' superior physical gifts, coupled with a reasonable understanding of the system and a slightly better feel for the game, while it may not be as good as Henne's, is going to be enough to make him the better QB, at least in theory. Obviously we're not going to know for sure if he is the better option until the bullets are being fired live, but that's going to be the case whether he starts week 1 of his rookie year or 2017.

 

The fact is, he will never have the same mental command of the game as long as he is sitting. He is going to learn more from that first pick 6, that first brutal sack and that first 4th Qtr defeat than he will from years of clipboard holding.

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