Big Numbers Don't Make Blake Bortles a Big-Time QB

These are heady days in Jacksonville.

At least, as heady as days get for a 5-8 football team.

The Jaguars are coming off one of their biggest wins in years, a 51-16 demolition of an Indianapolis Colts team that has made a habit of taking the Jaguars' lunch money in recent years. The team is one game out of first place in their division—if such a thing as first place exists in the AFC South.

And quarterback Blake Bortles is having what appears to be a great second season. His three scoring strikes against the Colts gave the No. 3 overall pick in the 2014 NFL draft an even 30 on the season.

That ranks second in the NFL. Second.

But as so often happens, the hype with Bortles is outpacing his actual development as a player.

Yes, the youngster is having a big season. But that doesn't make Bortles a big-time NFL quarterback.

As Bleacher Report's own Ian Kenyon pointed out, Bortles isn't just having a big year. In some respects, he's having an historic one:

Gil Brandt of NFL.com is on board as well, ranking Bortles as the best quarterback taken in the last two drafts:

Brandt elaborated on the ranking while speaking with colleague Chase Goodbread:

"

Here's a guy that didn't start many games at all in college. The magic number is 30 starts in college. He started less than that. But one of the best things (Jacksonville) did was to hire Nathaniel Hackett, a young guy who was at Buffalo as a coordinator and is a very, very good technician when it comes to teaching quarterbacks how to fundamentally play football.

Anybody that goes from 11 touchdowns a year ago to 30 touchdowns now, and the season's not over yet, that tells you a lot. I think he has athletic ability that you want, and he's not one of these guys that gets too high one day and too low the next. I like his demeanor. I like his size.

"

And there's no denying that Bortles has improved this season.

Season	Comp. %	YPA	YPG	TD	INT	Rating	QBR
2014	58.9	6.1	207.7	11	17	69.5	25.2
2015	57.5	7.0	271.1	30	13	88.4	49.8

By season's end, his touchdown total will all but certainly have tripled compared to his rookie season. His passer rating is nearly 20 points higher. Bortles is averaging almost a full yard more per attempt.

However, the love for the new and improved Bortles apparently does not extend to supporters of advanced analytics.

After the Jaguars blew out the Colts, Neil Paine of FiveThirtyEight made a point of asserting that Bortles really had very little to do with it, citing his microscopic QBR in the game:

"

Fifty-point outings are pretty rare in the NFL. When teams do break the half-century barrier, it’s usually the result of an exceptional individual performance; in 26 of the NFL’s 36 50-point games since 2006, the high-scoring team’s primary passer posted a score of 90 or better on Total QBR’s 0-to-100 scale, where 50 is average.

Only twice in the past decade has a team dropped 50 or more on an opponent despite its quarterback having a QBR below league average. The first was a mediocre Jay Cutler game from 2012, in which Cutler had a QBR of 43.8 — not horrendous, though also not what you think of when you envision a 50-point offensive outburst. The second happened Sunday, in the Jacksonville Jaguars’ out-of-nowhere 51-16 romp over the tailspinning Indianapolis Colts. Because, despite his team’s huge scoring output, Jags QB Blake Bortles posted an impossibly low 3.8 QBR for the game.

"

For those wondering, QBR is a new-school variant of passer rating concocted by the folks in Bristol a few years ago.

And Pete Prisco of CBS Sports (who is most assuredly not new school) thinks it's something else:

It isn't just the folks at FiveThirtyEight, either. Pro Football Focus ranks Bortles an OK 13th among quarterbacks for the season, behind the likes of Tyrod Taylor of the Buffalo Bills and Tampa Bay Buccaneers rookie Jameis Winston.

In last week's win? PFF ranked Bortles 28th, behind the likes of, well, just about everyone.

Bortles was not impressed with this assessment, although he did show quite the sense of humor about it:

"

@HankJoness @PFF pic.twitter.com/WSIVUJhfxc

— Blake Bortles (@BBortles5) December 15, 2015"

That thick skin will serve him very well as an NFL quarterback, that's for sure.

PFF's Sam Monson tried to explain how a player who threw for 250 yards and three scores with no interceptions could receive such a stinker of a grade:

"

Bortles gets a lot of credit from fans for “giving his receivers a chance to make a play” or playing to the strengths of his receivers. This is where things get murky, because Ryan Fitzpatrick gives his receivers a chance to make a play like no other quarterback in football, and it often works, but it means there are a lot of dangerous passes in the air that other quarterbacks never attempt. This season, he has the fifth-highest number of “turnover worthy plays,” with 25, but only 11 of them have been caught. Sometimes he goes on a lucky run and none of them are picked off, and sometimes he looks like he can’t stop throwing picks.

We graded the throws, not the outcome, because Bortles had no influence on the latter once the pass left his hand.

"

And Monson has a point.

Take, for example, Bortles' 80-yard touchdown pass in the highlight above. In the box score it looks phenomenal. To the eyeballs it looks like Bortles threw it into double coverage and got lucky.

And it isn't the first time this season that's happened. There's no denying Bortles' mechanics have improved, and the kid has a plus arm. But what's going on between his ears could still use more than a little work.

Bortles' completion percentage is actually down a bit from his rookie year. He's fumbled nine times, losing four. And frankly, he should count himself lucky (there's that word again) to only have 17 total turnovers this season.

There have been far too many ill-advised throws. Too much tunnel vision, where Bortles locks onto his primary read and throws it whether that receiver is open or not.

Then there's this:

I'm not sure what exactly you call that. And Bortles did it twice...in one game.

Fans of the Jaguars will likely see this as Bortles bashing. More disrespect heaped on a player and team that has a hard time getting any around the NFL after years of futility.

But it really isn't. Bortles is 23 years old—a pup by NFL standards. Wet behind the ears and everything. In some respects he's reminiscent of a young Brett Favre. He'll make one play that leaves your jaw on the floor, then follow that up with one that leaves your head in your hands.

In an NFL starved for quarterbacks, the Jaguars aren't complaining.

But Jaguars fans starved for success, yearning for a franchise savior under center (watching Blaine Gabbert play will make one yearn...and cry) need to slow their roll just a tad.

Because while Bortles has made great strides in Year 2—strides that show up in the box score—a closer look reveals that there's still much more work to be done.

Gary Davenport is an NFL analyst at Bleacher Report and a member of the Fantasy Sports Writers Association and the Pro Football Writers of America. You can follow Gary on Twitter, @IDPSharks.