Is Blake Bortles actually a good quarterback?

Blake Bortles played out of his mind again, which begs the question: is he actually good?

With the Jacksonville Jaguars moving to 10-4 on the season, all but shoring up a playoff spot, there’s a dangerous idea floating around the NFL. Blake Bortles is playing his way into being a part of the Jaguars future — and that’s not good.

Bortles has put together back-to-back weeks where he’s looked like an actual quarterback. Because of this, football fans are being lulled into a false sense of thinking he’s actually good — which he is when the team doesn’t need him to carry them on his back. When the Jaguars are leading, Bortles has thrown for over 1,600 yards and 12 touchdowns. That means almost 2,000 of his total yards this season have come in games where the Jags win by 15-points or more.

We call that garbage time, and it usually comes against bad teams.

Let [Bortles] throw for over 600 combined yards against the Colts, but what does Borltes’ two-minute offense look like in a playoff game in Foxboro?

Among games where Bortles posted a QBR of 80.0 or higher (8-games, to be clear), over 60 percent of them came against non-playoff teams. The outliers are games against the Rams, Ravens, and Seahawks. The game against Baltimore was a 44-7 blowout where Jacksonville never trailed, and the Seahawks was against a defense missing two key cogs in the Legion of Boom (Richard Sherman and Kam Chancellor). That means the only real outlier is against the Rams, a game Jacksonville lost.

Two of the Jaguars four losses — against the Jets in Week 4 and Cardinals in Week 12 — were lost by three points. In both of those games, Bortles posted a QBR in the 50s, and failed to throw for more than 200 yards. Both defenses rank well below the league average. Jacksonville’s signature win against the Steelers in Week 5 featured Bortles turning in a 95-yard effort. Leonard Fournette rushed for more yards on one carry in that game.

To be fair, the Jets and Steelers games were two months ago but put the game on the line and the ball in Bortles’ hands, all of a sudden things look a lot different. When the Jags are losing — specifically with four minutes or less in the game — Bortles has a quarterback rating of 56.4 with five interceptions.

By comparison, Russell Wilson has thrown for almost 2,000 yards while the Seahawks have been trailing. Because of this, Seattle is 8-5 and in a position to make a deep playoff run. Despite missing key pieces of the defense, Wilson has kept his team’s season alive with his arm. Put Bortles in that situation and the results are not the same. If we’re going to compare Bortles to franchise players, this is what we end up with. Let him throw for over 600 combined yards against the Colts, but what does Borltes’ two-minute offense look like in a playoff game in Foxboro?

In fact, we have seen Bortles in a game-winning situation. It didn’t end well.

Week 10 against the Chargers, the world watched as Bortles did everything in his power to lose the game in the final minutes. He airmailed an interception to Tre Boston but was bailed out by the Jaguars defense forcing a quick three-and-out. On the ensuing drive — with under a minute left and no timeouts — Bortles scrambled and was almost tackled in bounds. Jacksonville was able to kick a game-tying field goal and then win in overtime (thanks to a Jalen Ramsey interception) but the tape on Borltes doesn’t lie.

That’s the margin we’re dealing with when talking about Bortles leading the Jaguars in the future. If he’s an MVP talent, or a quarterback capable of leading a team to a Super Bowl, he needs to play like it all the time. The teams he has racked up stats against — Houston, Indianapolis, Cincinnati — are all staying home.

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Bortles has been playing better, but consistency is what the Jaguars need. It’s Stockholm Syndrome to think that a couple good games means that Borltes is suddenly someone who won’t end up being more of an anchor than anything else. Jacksonville has a world-class defense that deserves better run support than it’s getting.

Maybe I’m wrong — which hopefully is the case. Jaguars fans deserve a winner and this could be the happiest few years they’ve experienced since the 90s. Perhaps he’s turned a corner and this is the start of a career turnaround, but the numbers don’t support this.

The only question is will the shoe drop on Bortles before the Jaguars tether its future to him?