Blake Bortles' Poise, Decisiveness Shine Through Despite Jaguars Game Plan

The Jaguars never planned to start Blake Bortles this year. 

Whether you believe that or not, it became the company line as Bortles shined during the preseason. There were reasons to believe it was the right move, too, if you believe that a quarterback's growth can be stunted by a poor offensive line (let's call this Carr Syndrome). 

But on Sunday, the Jaguars took Bortles for a very safe test drive. They didn't spend any time on the highway. They made sure that the offensive line—let's call it a Chevy HHR that Bortles was learning with—wasn't pushed in any noticeable way by implementing a ton of screens, swing passes and short routes. 

That the Jaguars offense didn't really go anywhere on this ride was to be expected. The design of the offense was never going to allow that to happen. You don't build an offense around screen passes to Clay Harbor and expect to score 35 points. 

But Bortles survived. The offensive line allowed only three sacks. Carr Syndrome was possibly averted?

Week	DVOA (FO)	DYAR (FO)	PFF Rating
3 (vs. WAS)	33	9.9%	-3.3
4 (at SD)	-77	-41.9%	-2.2

It was hard to discern what the point of all this was. I'm not trying to crucify offensive coordinator Jedd Fisch. It's not easy to build an offense that works on backup offensive linemen, green receivers and journeymen. But by my count, Bortles threw 10 passes behind the line of scrimmage, a few more passes one or two yards beyond it and fewer than seven passes deeper than 10 yards.

On Bortles' deepest pass of the game, the 44-yard catch-and-stumble by Allen Hurns, Bortles had to sidestep a rusher before finding Hurns wide-open downfield. It was an extremely composed play that required a lot of integrated technique by Bortles. It also is the kind of play that we know he is able to make. 

What happened to the no-huddle offense? What happened to Hurns torching Eagles cornerbacks for long gains? The Jaguars shouldn't expect these things to happen on a play-by-play basis, but there's no way they're going to succeed without taking advantage of Bortles' arm and making the most of the talents their receivers have. 

The truth is that the Jaguars offense looked like it was torn between two different goals on Sunday. In the long run, the short passing game ties in to a wish list for the next good Jaguars team. The one that has a weapon like Cordarrelle Patterson or Kendall Wright to use effectively in space. That's right on the wish list next to the offensive line that's been running a zone-blocking scheme so long it's become second nature. It also, as mentioned above, keeps Bortles from becoming a Carr Syndrome patient. 

But if the Jaguars don't want to win as much as they want to continue building for their future, they can go ahead and not win with Chad Henne. Why play Bortles at all if not to test his development and teach him how far his gifts can take him? The only thing Bortles learned yesterday is the Matt Schaub Lesson: It's hard to score points when you never throw beyond the chains.

As Mike Tanier noted for us in his Monday Morning Hangover piece's segment on Teddy Bridgewater and Bortles, they weren't really that far apart in what they showed on the field Sunday. Bortles, on multiple occasions, looked incredible. He has the ability to run a hard-to-defend, no-huddle/read-option attack tomorrow. 

Bortles didn't really show as much as he could've on Sunday. I'm not sure exactly who to blame—if it's Bortles for thinking an even-numbers outside matchup was worthwhile or Fisch for putting so many possibilities into the playbook—but that can't continue. San Diego's defense is not Seattle's—the Jaguars could have turned this game into a shootout by putting more on Bortles' plate. 

Instead, they created an offense too boring to even be worth taking screenshots of. You know what a screen pass looks like. Imagine a lot of those. You just watched Blake Bortles' debut.

Maybe next game the Jaguars will throw more than a few passes beyond that mythical red marker that symbolizes first downs.