Blake Bortles has been a lightning rod for criticism, but it’s time to give him some actual credit.
One constant in the NFL playoffs this year has been hating on Blake Bortles. The Jaguars quarterback has been written off as more of an anchor than anything else, which was a fair criticism. Bortles benefited from having the league’s best defense behind him and a battering ram of a running back with Leonard Fournette.
That being said, the Blake Bortles apologists were right. If this brief playoff test was any indication of what the future holds, he absolutely has a chance to be a solid quarterback for the Jaguars. It may seem a contrarian statement (especially after I’ve been killing him all season long), but it certainly isn’t wrong. It’s never an easy thing to admit you were wrong, especially when the thing you were wrong about is something that seemed like such a sure thing (Bortles Bortling). But that’s the case here, and his playoff run needs to be acknowledged and appreciated.
No one outside of Duvall took Bortles seriously and they’d be foolish have done so given the piles of evidence against him. The bad decision making, the padding of stats in garbage time, the general uneasiness you felt when stacking him up against anyone.
Despite this, Bortles did what he needed to do. There’s no ‘yeah, but’ about it; he wasn’t as bad as anyone thought he’d be and was good enough to stay out of his own way. The consensus seemed to be that it was when not if Bortles would make some back-breaking mistake — but that never happened. He didn’t turn the ball over once the entire postseason and made throws when he needed to.
Don’t point to the fatal final drive of the Jaguars season where Bortles didn’t lead them to victory. Bortles made a throw that was incredibly defended by Stephon Gilmore — Bortles did his part. That was a theme last week in Pittsburgh too, when he made more than a few throws that put the Steelers away. Against New England, Bortles was stepping up in the pocket, using the run-option to help him, and reading the Patriots defense perfectly in the first half. Bortles was nearly flawless this postseason, which is stunningly difficult to comprehend.
Jacksonville’s defense carried the team and Leonard Fournette is the pulse of the offense, but Bortles did more than enough to earn himself another chance in 2018 to develop into the quarterback the Jaguars need him to be.
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I was wrong about Blake Bortles, and so was everyone else who doubted him. He still has work to do but we can meet in the middle that maybe he’s not the anchor we all assumed he was.