4:03 pm | September 16, 2018 | Go to Source | Author:
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — It’ll be hard for anyone around the NFL to have anything derogatory to say about Blake Bortles after Sunday night.
He’s not trash, a sub-par quarterback, and he certainly didn’t choke. In fact, he was pretty darn good — maybe the best he’s ever been.
Bortles played the best game of his career — and out-performed the greatest quarterback in NFL history in the process — and led the Jacksonville Jaguars to a 31-20 victory over the New England Patriots at TIAA Bank Field. It wasn’t a perfect day but, as he did in the postseason against the Pittsburgh Steelers, Bortles made some clutch plays late in the game to keep the Jaguars unbeaten (2-0).
Bortles finished with 377 pass yards and four touchdowns, making him just the third quarterback to put up those numbers in a game against Tom Brady (Alex Smith last season and Drew Brees in 2009). The Jaguars needed him to come up big because Leonard Fournette sat out the game with a right hamstring injury. Offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett put the game in Bortles’ hands and he delivered.
When Bortles plays like that, the Jaguars are the best team in the AFC, even when the defense has the kind of lapses they did against the Patriots.
Despite playing turnover-free football in the 2017 playoffs — and making some clutch fourth-quarter throws in the Jaguars’ divisional victory in Pittsburgh — there were still a ton of skeptics about the Jaguars’ decision to sign Bortles to a contract extension. Especially with Kirk Cousins available.
However, the Jaguars stayed with Bortles. Executive vice president of football operations Tom Coughlin saw the improvement from 2016 (the worst season of Bortles’ career), especially in cutting down turnovers, and felt with the run game and the Jaguars’ stacked defense that Bortles would be good enough to get to and win a Super Bowl.
Sure looks like he was right.
Bortles wasn’t great in a Week 1 victory over the New York Giants, but he was really darn good against the Patriots. Bortles out-dueled Brady in the first half, completing 17-of-25 passes for 200 yards and three touchdowns to different receivers (Donte Moncrief, Keelan Cole and Austin Seferian-Jenkins). That staked the Jaguars to a 21-3 lead at halftime.
Bortles made one poor decision in the second half, forcing a throw to tight end Seferian-Jenkins between two Patriots defenders that was intercepted, but other than that, he played a nearly flawless game.
He had plenty of time to throw (he wasn’t sacked) and three times he scrambled to convert third downs: a 9-yard gain on third-and-6, a 10-yard gain on third-and-7, and a 10-yard run on third-and-9 with less than three minutes remaining. He also lowered his shoulder and tried to run over Patriots cornerback Stephon Gilmore on another third-down run and came up a yard short.
So despite what Jurrell Casey (Bortles will choke), Jadeveon Clowney (he’s trash), Vontaze Burfict (he can’t beat the Bengals) and Earl Thomas (he’s sub-par QB) said, Bortles has shown he’s good enough to win big games.
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