NFL Gameday: Divisional [Archived] • Page 69

3 is a super fair line for that game considering both teams have great defenses and quarterbacks that can be inept if they're having a rough day.

 

I get that, but the Eagles defense also shut down a power house Falcons offense. Keep in mind this was a offense that pooped all over the Rams a week prior.

 

Here’s how it plays out.

Bortles has now had two decent seasons where his TD:INT ratio was 2:1. In 2015 he was third in passing yards and tied for first in TDs, so between that year and playoffs this year, it’d be incorrect & unrealistic to assume that they aren’t still intrigued by his potential. Matt and I are itching to push him out the door but I strongly doubt our front office is.

The team is likely to dismiss his rookie season as a tough learning experience with a naked roster. Which means 2016 is probably the only year that was actually concerning to our front office.

While his 2016 showed worrying regression.... the fact he bounced back, improved his mechanics a lot, and cut down on the turnovers in 2017, likely earned him another chance. Our coaches & office are looking for him to make it 3 decent years (statistically) out of 5. They’re gonna use this fifth year option as a measuring stick to see if the pattern of improvement continues.

If he does that, and gets to the playoffs two years in a row with this talented roster... I consider it seriously unlikely we won’t resign him.

Not that I want to. You all know I want a different QB back there.

But I just know that NFL teams are afraid to mess with the status quo when they start winning, and I know that for the sake of marketing to the fans (most of whom are dumb and actually like Bortles) and for the sake of keeping continuity while we are winning... they’re likely to avert the risk of finding someone else. As much as Bortles leaves us desiring more, I feel like he’s the new Andy Dalton... where almost all other franchise QB are better, but drafted / journeyman QB are still not likely or guaranteed to be as good.

At the same time, my argument to Matt was, that still wouldn’t mean we are stuck with him forever. We may not spend tons of draft capital on an outright early first round replacement... but we can certainly draft competition — and it’s not out of the question at all that a second or third round value QB that we draft in the future, ends up being better than Bortles haha.

 

Yeah I get that, I think it comes down to all of the NFC teams being really good this year. I feel Vikings/Eagles is pretty even, but Keenum seems like a more trusted commodity in the eyes of gamblers I’m thinking. At least when compared to Foles

 

I do think O line play will be key.

 

Looooool

 

the saints sort of bewilder me. no other team would have kept payton as long as they have. This is the first season since maybe the year they won the SB that they've been a good team on both sides of the ball. I'm sure his relationship with Brees has a lot to do with it, but holy hell those 2 challenges last night were so awful.

 

If this year doesn't worry them then they need to go hahaha.

Except Andy Dalton is much better haha

This is such a horrendous idea.

 

This year compared to last year showed he’s on an incline, that’s why it’s not worrying our front office. He had lapses but overall played better, showed he’s capable of scaling back and playing ball control, showed he’s capable of stacking up some good games in a row. It was also his first year averaging less than one INT per game haha.

Weirdly efficient Bortles / bad Bortles were about 50/50 this year.

My main issue with him at this point is his accuracy is never consistent from game to game. Some games he’s just dropping dimes downfield out of nowhere (Seahawks) and some games he can’t even throw ONE accurate ten yard pass (Bills).

That shit is annoying cause even after scoring 45 on the Steelers, and thinking we can beat anybody... we are still at risk to fart and have less than 150 yards passing against the Pats. With Bortles we are always at risk to just totally take a shit on offense.

Not really haha Bortles outperformed him 2/4 years. Bortles fluctuates more / is more volatile for sure though.

How can such an ordinary idea be horrendous? Keep your QB for stability but also stay proactive about finding a good match of value and talent to compete for the job?

It’s not as perfect / flashy as trading up for a QB and striking gold (huge risk if youre wrong.) But it’s generally what teams do when they don’t have a high enough draft pick to get a top QB.

I want Cousins or Smith but the front office almost certainly considers the QB job Bortles’s to lose. Just trying to be realistic about what will happen rather than biased about what I want.

 

Not turning the ball over is the simplest way to deceive people. Tyrod Taylor is not a great QB despite his historic safe-keeping of the ball. Danny Etling didn't turn the ball over much either. It's hard to turn the ball over when you're so inaccurate you can't even hit a defender.

I wouldn't say so at all.

Because bringing in competition is the definition of creating instability.

Something being biased doesn't mean it's incorrect.
Something being realistic doesn't mean it's not stupid.

 

Not the same thing man. Bortles doesn’t really throw the ball away haha so it’s not like he’s just curveballing bad reads and avoiding INTs that way.

I think in his case a reduction in turnovers directly shows he’s making the right decisions in his progressions more often.

That’s fine, agree to disagree. I take 2017 Bortles over Andy Dalton. But it’s close.

Not unless the competition is better than Bortles. In which case that’s a better result than stability with Bortles to begin with.

The only difference is we didn’t have to go quarterback-less in between.

This sounds exactly like something I would say. Haha. I agree.

But overall I think at this point everyone exaggerates how bad Bortles is. He’s fun to make fun of and I get it, he had an UGLY trajectory and laughable mechanics the past 3 years, he literally threw away a lot of games we could have won... but he really hasn’t been the same huge liability this year as he was in the past.

 

You guys win to go to the AFC Championship and you're still going back and forth with back-and-forth #Jaxssertations.

 

We’ve done this before and lost to the Patriots before and still kept our mediocre QB before. If you’re just counting playoff losses and not AFC champ losses, we’ve done it 3 times. So it’s relevant. Lol

 

The Pats have kicked us out at every level of the playoffs. 1996 AFCCG, 2005 wild card round, 2007 divisional round

 

I think it directly shows that the scheme has adjusted to his flaws, which it has. And that even then, Bortles makes horrible decisions, he's just so inaccurate nothing comes from them haha. Like throwing a deep ball into triple coverage to Marquise Lee. Or missing a dozen wide open dump off passes. Or just chucking the ball at a covered RB when he gets under pressure. That shit isn't cool.

That's a big if considering we're talking about a late rounder.

He is LITERALLY a liability now. Before he was bad. But so was the team so it meant nothing. Now the team is potentially elite but we'll NEVER gross that gap with Bortles. So it's basically "do we want to peak or do we want to get better?"

 

This is why I wanted us to miss the playoffs haha. Because people will get delusional with Bortles and associate team success with his success. I don't want to be Flacco'd. I certainly don't want to be Flacco'd with a QB that played poorly haha. Flacco at least had a good run.

 

The Bills game and Titans game looked like this for sure.

He’s reduced games like these and I’d say more than half the games this season, we saw more competent decision making - subtle & patient shifts in the pocket, scanning 2nd and 3rd reads, throwing to an open spot or anticipating an opening, only throwing deep when it’s one on one etc.

But I agree he hasn’t proven he can eliminate the long stretches of brain farts. Which is why he doesn’t have my trust. And the fact we saw back to back games that looked like you described, right as the playoffs began, is DEF a huge concern.

His accuracy is not always as bad though. We are in an ugly 3 game skid. But I can point to numerous games this season he actually was on the money. And that certainly has to do with better mechanics & comfort in the pocket.

Everything is a big if. KC wanting to trade with us is a big IF. Cousins asking for less than 28 mill per season is an IF hahaha.

I hope we get lucky and get a trustworthy solution right away, sure.

But if we don’t? Bortles knows the offense, Hackett knows how to compensate for his flaws, and the receivers know how to bail him out lmao. It’s less of a liability / more stable than transitioning a not-that-great QB into our scheme if we were to miss on our best potential options in Cousins & Smith.

I think we should still have our eyes on improving from him. I just don’t want to do anything rash. It would be too easy to take the red pill and go for a QB who ends up just as big of a hassle / project as he was, due to the scarcity of the position. At some point there’s always a dice roll. Some teams would rather bet on their coaching continuing to develop a player if they’ve already seen positive results.

If that’s what’s going to happen, nah I’ll take my 4 year head start on that average franchise QB project, rather than starting over on somebody who makes all those boneheaded mistakes all over again.

 

And also certainly has to do with his scheme. I'm not impressed by him because when he looks good he just looks like an average QB who can throw to an open receiver.

Fun fact - We will know these things sooner rather than later.

Yes, so keep his fifth year option and drop him haha.

"Average"

He'd be a bottom five franchise QB and that's only because we don't know what Trubs or Mahomes really look like.

 

That’s underselling it by a lot. When he looks good he completes all kinds of deep passes and posts a 300 / 3 TD line easily. His highs are high — that’s literally the whole appeal of Bortles and the whole reason the team still believes in him haha.

The storyline is the same as it always was. He’s volatile as shit and patchy/sloppy with his technique but he does have high scoring, downfield throwing potential. Work on the former and you unlock the latter.

y a y

I wish. I still really wanna draft somebody in round 1 next year idealistically (not realistically)

If he plateaus, sure, but he’s only been under Marrone for a year. Another year of the same amount of improvement would make Bortles a middle of the pack QB. Say he adds 3 TDs, subtracts 3 INTs, adds 200 yards, raises his accuracy by 2 percentage points.

That’s 3900 yards, 24 TD, 10 INT, 62%. Solid numbers, and it’s not like I projected a HUGE JUMP. All that is, is like, maybe he has 12 solid games and 4 bad ones rather than the 9 & 7 we got this year.

This is why I like the fifth year option. We aren’t just gonna react and sign him long term because of one lucky playoff run where he played bad. He might still legit prove to us, fair and square by having a better year, that it’s safer to go with him than draft someone else.

 

I don't think it's underselling it at all. That's a pretty accurate description haha. The majority of his good moments are moments that any QB has to make to keep his job. And even then he's looked atrocious attempting these passes. The offense has been simplified greatly and he still can't consistently get it down.

I was completely fine with selling the farm for a QB this year but I don't think Rosen is the answer. Again, I'm down with Tyrod and Lamar, fuck it.

Solid numbers. But you actually have to watch the games to see why those numbers lie. Also, a middle of the pack QB maybe but still one of the worst franchise QBs in the league. Josh McCown isn't a franchise QB. Neither is Alex Smith, Case Keenum, or (maybe) Kirk Cousins.

I think he plays basically the same but we lose one game earlier, they take that to be progress, they re-sign him, we can no longer afford to re-sign one of the guys we need to, and we drop off rapidly. We make the playoffs again in 2020 and then resume our shittiness.

 

Meh, Seahawks Bortles showed me some pretty advanced level things, in terms of anticipation and in terms of good accuracy & touch... and for a good part of this season hes been setting his feet and throwing spirals. Again, I think it's easy to look at Bortles this year with tinted glasses considering how ugly of a project he was before this offseason, but he's a lot smoother and cleaner throwing the ball and it's not as bad as you're depicting. It is in some games, but those are so far appearing to happen less often.

I just don't like it. I like actually throwing haha. I have a feeling there'd be some teams, with good defensive coordinators who teach excellent containment & gap discipline... that we just never figure out how to beat if we tried that kind of offense.

Talk about never bridging the gap to elite. Trying to run an offense with two QB who'd rather run than pass...

I was taking that into account. I saw your post in the other thread about how 8-10 or so of the starting QB in the league don't even count. Those numbers are middle of the pack for FRANCHISE QB.

And saying Alex Smith isn't a franchise QB is just silly. The timing of his contract & age are awkward, maybe teams won't want to sign him long term because of that... but that doesn't mean you can demote him from being GOOD ENOUGH to be a long-term option, when you're strictly talking about QB talent haha. He hasn't declined yet or anything.

Okay, is this a genuine prediction, or are you being facetious? Because how is this not the exact worst case scenario? hahaha. I cannot compute the fact that you will say things like this but then insist that you are always realistic and never pessimistic? At least jokingly you definitely sometimes veer toward the latter when it comes to the Jags.

 

He's not as bad as he used to be but he's still very bad.

Well, we can't actually throw much with Bortles either haha. We would at least have better runners.

Then that's simply false haha.

He's leaving a team. He is by definition, not a franchise QB.

I never say I'm "always realistic" haha. I say I'm realistic when I'm realistic haha. That is definitely worst case scenario. But it's not outside the realm of possibility at all. We stick with Bortles, and we're in major trouble.

 

He's better. But still below average, largely because he's too inconsistent to be reliable. Last year he was "very bad". I wouldn't use the words "very bad" this year.

This year he was very bad in a few winnable games (NYJ, ARI, TEN). But for the most part he was serviceable and avoided big mistakes... while posing enough of a running threat and downfield threat for defenses to take him seriously, and not just 8-man box it against Fournette.

He was somehow the driving force behind one of our toughest wins this season vs Seattle, which still shocks me when I think about that game. The narrative is a little different now because he has now shown on a couple occasions that his good games are capable of elevating our receiving talent -- we've had backups in this whole time.

The fact he's shown marked improvement despite losing ARob AND Hurns most of this season, is something i can't simply ignore, even though I still don't like the idea of re-signing him at all. It does at least make me want to see what happens next year (if we can't get Alex Smith.) What if we DID have ARob this year, does that also contribute to better numbers and more wins? I mean, probably!

Theoretically he should improve a lot when we get a full WR corps back. If he plateaus, that's unacceptable in my opinion and we absolutely let him walk.

Idk, Bortles has over 100 yards rushing in two playoff games. hahahaha

Are you seriously suggesting that you EXPECT better than 25/10 and 4000 yards out of the QB position? Come on man. I'd love those numbers hahaha. I don't care if they came from Bloke Blatles... I would gladly take that because that kind of season still helps a team with a good defense compete for Superbowls.

The argument you're about to construct probably says Philip Rivers is an "average franchise QB" (because he's like #7 and you only count 14 or 15 QB in the NFL as franchise QBs)..... that's just not how i look at it. Of the 32 QB, if you can do better than 15 of them then you're a competitive QB and I'll root for you.

2017 Bortles is still for sure a bottom 15 QB. But if another consecutive year of noticeable improvement follows this one, and if he actually does play steady/consistent in a contract year, we might not still be saying that.

 

He was at times very bad. Like REALLY bad. That Buffalo games were very bad.

We've had rookie back-ups in all season but their biggest highlights are often when they're wide open. I can't praise the dude for being able to SOMETIMES hit open guys. He hasn't even been able to consistently hit open guys haha.

Again, mostly wide open absurd plays haha.

We won't be competing for Superbowls is what I'm saying. Also, those numbers are lying lol. Numbers can look good but if almost every drive ends because Bortles can't make simple throws then what good are they? A fucking dump off pass shouldn't be a nailbiter and I shouldn't shit my pants every time he throws it into the secondary.

We might not. But we likely will be having Bortles at QB REGARDLESS. And this year's improvement is marginal. If Bortles makes significant improvement then I'm all for it but I've seen no reason to believe that's possible considering the biggest improvement made was Robinson tearing his ACL and the scheme having to be altered to account for receivers with absolutely no physicality. Like, you point to Seattle, I'm pointing to Buffalo. He was atrocious.

 

i mean at this point we see the same things but disagree on their frequency.

I've found that I feel like the bolded during the game, but after the game I realize Bortles wasn't actually that scary and was making pretty okay decisions, and that most of my freaking out comes from what he did in the past.

Maybe try rewatching the games on Game Rewind when you're not in the emotion / suspense of the moment and see if you still feel the same way?

That's fine. Buffalo game was atrocious. I don't agree the improvement was marginal -- instead i think the REALLY bad games can be explained by, some defensive schemes confuse him and some of them don't. When he's not confident in his reads, he starts getting sloppy physically as well. His worst games were against zone blitz teams that offer a lot of pre-snap disguises (Todd Bowles, Bruce Arians, Dick LeBeau).

I want to see confidence in every game next year, and less of that confused toddler stumbling around in the pocket and flicking the ball like he's never thrown a ball before. He better be watching film and not macking on blondes at Hoptinger this summer. He better have backup reads prepared in case the defense makes certain shifts / changes their look after the snap. He better NOTICE when the defense sees through his audible and throw the ball away.