Hello and welcome back to the Blake Bortles show. Today, our hero valiantly tried to defeat triple coverage. You will not be surprised to learn that the throw was so ill-advised that the Cowboys got an interception almost by accident.
The Jaguars were destroyed in Dallas today, 40-7. There were plenty of bleak offensive performances today across the league, though no others came from a team that pundits and fans had any actual expectations for. Bortles finished 15-for-26 for 149 yards, and he did have one very nice throw to Dede Westbrook for a touchdown, though, as always, the problems with him were his decision making and consistency.
The offense is listless across the board. His team punted on every drive until halfway through the third quarter, only managing one first down in the first half. After the Jaguars got the ball back following Bortles’s interception, Keelan Cole fumbled it on the very next play. Without Leonard Fournette, the running game looks dead, and the offensive line is in such bad shape that they signed Ereck Flowers seemingly on purpose.
The thing is, their defense is built to overcome such shortcomings, and the most alarming number of all is the 40 points conceded to a Dallas offense that has only scored more than half that amount once all year. The Jaguars are supposed to win by smothering opposing offenses then stumbling ass-backwards into enough points to win. When the defense is closer to mortal, as it was against Kansas City, they will struggle to win games. When it’s straight up bad, they don’t stand a chance.
That play’s not Bortles’s fault, obviously, but it’s never been more clear that he is an active liability for his team, and not a “game manager” or a “stopgap solution” or any other cliche that means “average.” The Jags defense needs to be perfect to give the team a chance to win, and there’s no way they won’t regress after their historic 2017 campaign. Without that, Bortles needs to do more, which is never good.