The reason is simple, a fresh (unbiased) set of eyes. There's no doubt that David Caldwell has done a good job in bringing in talent, however, if he's "missed" on his most important draft pick in Blake Bortles, will he be able to swallow his pride, admit the mistake and move on in a timely fashion? This is a situation that doesn't get talked about enough, and I think it's the most crucial. We all would like to believe that Blake will shore up his mechanics, improve his accuracy, ball placement, and decision making, but what if he doesn't? It'd be borderline-insane to commit (long term) to a guy with so many fundamental flaws, as a huge Bortles fan this hurts to think about, but we have to be realistic and honest in our assessments if we ever wish to get over the proverbial "hump" as a franchise.

 

This situation is similar to the Gene Smith/Blaine Gabbert conundrum just a few years ago, I'm not trying to compare Smith to Caldwell or Gabbert to Bortles, it's obvious that Caldwell/Bortles are better, but the situation(s) are similar. Gene Smith forced his "handpicked" QB onto Mike Mularkery (there's no doubt the job wasn't as attractive because of the QB situation which likely limited the coaching pool), it turned out Gabbert wasn't the guy which ultimately cost Mularkey his job, my question is, how many coaches will be willing to attach their wagons to the Blake Bortles train? It reminds me of a comment Daniel Jeremiah (a guy I respect because he's well connected) made in the off-season, I'm paraphrasing here but was along the lines of "people around the league aren't as high on Bortles as fans/fantasy community", at the time I adamantly disagreed but what if he's right?

 

Blake's play so far this year hasn't exactly inspired confidence, if Blake continues to play this bad, it would be a disservice to the organization and the fans to not go into this off-season with an unbiased set of eyes, I'd like to believe David will be able to swallow his pride/ego, but history tells us GM's rarely do that. If Shad decides to keep David (this is the likely scenario), then it's incumbent upon Shad to make sure that David is looking at this situation with unbiased eyes. If Blake isn't the guy long-term, I don't think this organization is in a position to delay the inevitable. The best case scenario of course is Blake dispelling this situation by playing lights out the next 13 games, I have my doubts there. The absolute worst case scenario is Blake continues to play like crap, David forces "his" QB onto the next head-coach, Blake isn't the guy long term which results in David and our next head coach both getting the axe from Shad in 2017/2018, which has a variety of different consequences with one of them being (potentially) missing out on another QB in free agency (a Jimmy Garoppolo/Josh McDaniels pairing comes to mind) or in the draft. Blake needs to play better and play better NOW because a lot is on the line not only in the interim, but long-term as well.

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