(02-20-2018, 01:51 AM)JUNGLE CAT 2017 Wrote:

(02-20-2018, 12:38 AM)Bullseye Wrote: Not entirely sure the sentence in bold means Bortles is a bad QB.

There are numerous things to consider: 7 or 8 scoring drives this past season were one-play defensive returns for TDs. Eliminate those points from the thinking. Were they the difference in the outcome of ball games? Maybe.

When the Jaguars commit to run the football folks get upset because it takes away passing statistics. Bortles figures are not the most important thing. 

Blake's TD throws reduced from 23 to 21 this past season. You can make a knee-jerk and state that the running game "robbed" Bortles of two TD passes. Yet, the Jaguars' rushing TDs went from just 8 in 2016 to 18 rushing TDs in 2017.

The case for Blake Bortles closes when you arrive at the realization that unlike the rushing attack, the Jaguars are at a stall improving Blake Bortles, who remains a basic shot-gun college quarterback unable to process swiftly enough to become a drop-back passer with a run-heavy offensive attack. 

Despite Bortles flat-line in terms of production, the Jaguars did find a way to increase offensive production to a point of league-respectability. The bottom line is Bortles represents a awful amount of waste. Running the football placed significant limitations on the allowable amount of offense wasted by Bortles.

By contrast, as one national writer pointed out, the Jaguars are as close to the Alabama model as you can get. Our defense now stacks up against anybody. Our offensive identity is to run the football. In that way, we already are a pro team like Alabama. Bortles does NOT fit into that model as he requires the lion's share of offensive plays to generate the statistics which keep his career alive.

A. J. McCarron does fit the Jaguars' model. At Alabama, he was mainly tasked with generating a highly efficient passing game and manage to keep the aerial attack at peak production. His results along side Alabama's bruising rushing attack speaks volumes of a quarterback capable of coexisting with a powerful running game like we have on our hands.

Can Bortles do the same? No. In fact, the Jaguars discovered the waste Bortles is responsible for and turned it into offensive production a way other than relying upon Blake Bortles.

In fairness, one of the 'pitfalls' of remarkable improvements in team defense and special teams is 'the short field'. Great defenses and special teams tend to hand the ball over to the offense with less distances to pay dirt. Whenever you see less than expected yardage by an offense you have to look to scoring summary for the 'short field' effect.

Eliminate those defensive scores, the Jaguars are still around 11th or 12th in scoring, which still represents vast improvement over previous years.

Also consider Bortles was working without a true #1 WR for 15 and 3/4 games this year, and for much of the latter portion of the season, played with two rookies (a 4th round pick and a UDFA) and a street free agent at WR.  The team also played without anything resembling a constant receiving threat at TE.

With Bortles and without defensive scores, the Jaguars still put up 23 against a good Seattle team, 31 on the road in the playoffs against a good Pittsburgh defense, and 20 against New England (something Pittsburgh didn't do in their game against the Pats).

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