Quote:Just for clarity, Big Ben had a Quarter back rating of 98.1, 98.6, and 75.4 throughout the listed years.  The third year was the worst of his entire career, so it's a bit arbitrary;  keep in mind that in year 3, Roethlisberger was hit while riding his motorcycle during training camp causing a nearly fatal injury, had an emergency appendectomy that caused him to miss the first game of the year, and suffered a concussion in game 7 that affected him for several games in the following weeks (garnered from a wiki page.)

 

If you add in the 4th year its 32TD, 11INT, and 3154 with rating of 104.1.  He was basically an instant fit, with one single down year.

 

Much the way Bortles showed he's obviously a strong prospect in spite of being "bottom of the league" to the espn talking heads that don't actually know the circumstances and just look at box scores. Sometimes you have to look beyond raw stats at the player instead of the stats which are heavily influenced by situation. The same kind of game can be played with guys like Steve Young, Brett Favre, Eli Manning, or Steve McNair. All of them had a pretty rough statistical start to their careers and went on to be highly successful. Same with Drew Brees, who didn't even look like an elite prospect early on.

 

We can see it with Bortles, even if he's a 20TD/15INT guy this season with 3000 yards it doesn't change that we can actually see he has the right traits to be at least a good QB once he's got the requisite experience and roster quality around him with a real chance at being great.

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