Quote:There seemed to be change in Blake's game following the London game during their bye week. This stats prior to and after the bye week are vastly different as he was on pace for a decent season but finished dead last among starting QBs in most stats. Here's the difference
(he didn't start week three, but he threw enough passes with 24 to count it as a full game)
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First 8 games
(Bortles went 1-6 as a starter)
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<p style="margin-left:40px;">176 of 278
(63.3%, 35 attempts per game) for 1921 yards (6.9 YPA, 240.1 yards per game), 8 TDs and 14 INTs for a 72.2 qb rating


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Last 6 games (Bortles went 2-4 as a starter
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<p style="margin-left:40px;">104 of 197 (52.8%, 33 attempts per game) for 987 yards (5.0 YPA, 164.5 yards per game), 3 TDs and 3 INTs for a 65.7 qb rating


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Let's say they take Bortles attempts down to about 25 per game where he's learned from last year and has stats similar to his first half games with the INTs similar to his last half. Then you'd have a qb with these stats for a full season...


 

<p style="margin-left:40px;">253 of 400 for 2760 yards, 16 TDs and 8 INTs for a 120.0 qb rating


 

This sounds like a reasonable expectation to me. His passing yardage drops here from 240 per game like his early games last year to 172.5 more like his late season games, but they 'll need to make up for this with the running game to save Blake's arm for the full season.

 

A couple of things happened at the bye week. The most important is that Allen Robinson went on injured reserve. He was the #1 receiver on the team when he went down, and his tough catches were a significant part of the reason that the team was sustaining drives so well in the earlier part of the season compared to the latter. Once Robinson went down Bortles didn't have a guy he could count on to make the catch at the first down marker.

 

The other thing that happened was that Fisch tried to emphasize cutting down on INTs, who knows how much that affected Bortles in causing him to doubt his own decisions during games.

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