Quote:That remains to be seen. I hope he will become 'that' guy, but by the end of last season he was regressing badly in his throwing mechanics. I largely blame that on our o-line failing to give him reasonable pass protection. In my opinion, putting Bortles out there before we had a decent offensive line hurt his long term development and as a result, hurt the team. Putting a rookie quarterback behind a sieve of an offensive line is asking for trouble.

 

We had no realistic chances at all last season of being any good and should have left Henne out there if for no other reason than to protect our rookie franchise quarterback 'investment' until we actually had at least a reasonable o-line in front of him. It was a classic example of putting the cart in front of the horse situation. I would've thought we had learned that from our experience with Blaine Gabbert; he was a rookie with good attributes that got put behind a line that was a joke. The results were inevitable, as will be the results with Bortles if he doesn't get a decent line in front of him.

 

When Brunell was here, he had one of the best offensive lines in the game protecting him, a premier running back, and premier receivers. Plus Mark didn't come here a rookie. It's a substantially different situation for Bortles.

I will also add that a good part of this is due to having a defensive inclined head coach. Outside of Bortles, all of our 'big deals' were defensive players. The result... we had a poor offense that couldn't put points on the board even when they did make it to the 'red zone'. The results were inevitable. It seems like an offensive minded coach will tend to help build a more balanced team; at least, that's been my observation with this team. With TC, we were good on both offense and defense; but with JDR, we became one dimensional and then just plain bad.  

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