Quote:My best guess would be its weakest point was coaching and game planning. Other than that I think that Cyp was a coverage liability, but the talent on the defense is (I think) good enough to be a real legitimate top ten unit.


Like I've been saying, anyone that places blame for the team's failings last year only on Bortles clearly doesn't understand what we all saw. The team underachieved badly against its talent level. I think that can stop in 2017.

No one is serving 100% of the blame pie to Bortles, but his share is the definitely the largest piece and it's more than half the pie followed by sizable pieces being served to special teams and leadership/coaching. The defense played very well last year given the hand they were dealt all too often by the other two units, but they significantly underperformed in the turnover department as has already been noted. The defense generating more turnovers could have masked Bortles gaffes, or Bortles limiting his gaffes could have made the defensive improvement more evident. If I had to choose only one of those two things to improve this year, I'd choose for Bortles to limit his gaffes. Hopefully both improve, but it's quite possible neither do.


A reduction in attempts leading to fewer gaffes would be nice, but I'm not ready to draw that conclusion as it's not like they all happened in the 4th quarter. His turnovers, more often than not, either put the opponent in the end zone or in field goal range. That has to not only be reduced, but be reduced dramatically for this team to ascend.


I laid this out pretty clearly in a thread last December about points assigned to the Jags D that were actually more the responsibility of the offense/ST, but there is still a clear emotional attachment to the guy for some based on the excitement he brought in 2015.

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