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This mentality by football fans is kind of silly. It's oversimplifying the matter. If you don't understand how playing behind a garbage O-Line with  no running game and a bunch of rookie receivers can hurt a QB's development when the focus of that development is to completely rework their lower body mechanics then you've never played the position, or football in general. It has nothing to do with Bortles getting shell shocked, he literally won't be able to improve the things they want him to and will regress back to his old habits under these conditions, it's inevitable. Bortles and the team will be better off maintaining the course. Most of the people screaming for Bortles didn't even want him in the first place, now they're second guessing the guys who got us him in the first place. smh. Caldwell said from the beginning he knew Bortles had a high floor and probably expected him to outplay Henne, but he also knows Bortles can be even better given proper time to work on his fundamentals. I'd rather wait and get a Bortles who is consistently elite than toss him out there early because of knee jerk fanbase reaction and get a Bortles that is inconsistent and may never have the time to smooth out those inconsistencies because you couldn't wait an extra couple weeks/months.

 

No, you're over-complicating the mental aspect of the game of football. These are grown men we're talking about. If he's a good learner, he'll pick up every mechanic he's taught, he'll realize it works better than the previous method of his mechanic, and he won't regress from that regardless of how bad his line is. Please stop perpetuating this myth that every quarterback is Blaine Gabbert and David Carr, especially when the very pro quarterback he's often compared to is a rookie quarterback who won 15 straight games with one of the worst offensive lines in the league his rookie year.

 

His first game is an inevitability. Keeping him on the bench is not going to change that. It's not going to make a difference for how he reacts in that first game, whether it's next week or next year, because watching doesn't slow the game down, playing does. The same principle applies to the average person learning to drive.

 

People didn't want Bortles to start because of the comparisons made to Blaine Gabbert. But Blaine Gabbert was a bad quarterback and really showed nothing of the mental game in college.

 

And you know what? A bad quarterback can also hinder the development of receivers. You saw that much from Cecil Shorts where he often wasn't even looking for the ball until 3rd downs because of how often the quarterback checked down his first and second year in the league.

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I don't care how you feel one way or another, but it's not foolish or "silly" of fans to want to start Bortles, especially when there's plenty of valid points in favor of it.

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