Quote:Yet you have no problem assigning the blame of his low % comp to the receivers "drops"?

 

 

When fact is, his low % completion isn't because our receivers are dropping balls...it's because Blake holds on to the ball trying to make the big play rather than taking what the defense gives him. Our top receivers Yards per catch reflects this. Our QB's yards per completion reflects this. His sack numbers reflect this. And his Yards per attempts reflects this as well. All of those four stats are tied together.

 

His completion % isn't down because receivers are dropping balls...it's because he refuses (or doesn't see) to take the check down. I'm not saying he needs to be a checkdown machine like Henne or Garrard. But him knowing when to give up IS the next step in his development...both from improving his completion %, efficiency, and lowering his mistakes.

This is where we differ.  I don't assign the blame on his low % on drops to receivers.  I've been pretty clear that there's plenty of blame to go around.  You're clearly someone who needs one person to blame.  I prefer to look at the bigger picture and recognize that football is a team sport.   If you looked up the ranking for dropped passes in the league, the Jaguars are in the top 10 in the league for drops.  Hurns and Robinson may have cleaned up their issues from early in the season, but they're not the only guys who are being targeted, so SOMEONE is dropping those passes.  Bortles can't do that for himself as much as I'm sure you wish he could.

 

There have been plenty of drops during the course of the entire season.  These have absolutely impacted his completion %, but you clearly discount those in order to dismiss the progress Bortles has made.  If the team simply cleaned up the drops, Bortles completion % would jump by 5% to 62% completion rate.  Not great, but better than what we're seeing currently.  It would be better than Aaron Rodgers, and only a couple of points behind Tom Brady.   

 

I don't have a problem with a QB holding on to the ball trying to make a play as long as it's not resulting in more forced errors or sacks.  Compared to his rookie season, things have improved significantly there.  I'm guessing you probably complained about David Garrard and Chad Henne and their propensity to play captain checkdown the majority of the time they were on the field.  We finally get a QB who goes through his progressions and doesn't opt for a quick dump off and you're not happy with that.  You ignore any progress he has made, including in giving up on plays when there's nothing there for him.  We're seeing Bortles throwing the ball away more, or pulling the ball down and running with it.  The team is averaging 3 sacks a game this year vs. more than 4.5 a game last year with Bortles as the starter, and it's not because the line is doing a better job of protecting him. He's just gotten better at avoiding the sack and making plays.

 

I'm not going to waste the time digging into it, but I'm betting you didn't want the team to draft Bortles, and because they did, you filter everything through that bias when you're evaluating where he's at with his development.  Probably had a Bridgewater poster ready to put on your ceiling.

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