Jacksonville Jaguars Admit Bortles Is Their Only Hope

Turns out Tom Coughlin was right to question the Jacksonville Jaguars quarterback situation upon his arrival a few months ago.

In hindsight people shouldn’t have been so quick to doubt his seemingly knee-jerk reaction and lack of faith in Blake Bortles. The guy has two Super Bowl rings and has coached some outstanding quarterbacks in his career. One would think he knows what real ones and fake ones look like. What has Bortles done in three seasons to convince anybody that he’s a franchise guy?

Sure he had a good 2015 with respectable numbers and his coaching wasn’t the greatest over that span. Even so the amount of leeway he was afforded at times was a bit much. Now it may have cost the Jaguars yet another season. Despite having arguably the most underrated roster in the NFL, Bortles was almost grudgingly made the starting quarterback again for 2017.

Doug Marrone was quite blunt in that assessment when he made the decision.

"“I think that the first thing that I look at is to make sure that who’s going to give us the best chance to win in the situation that we’re in,” Marrone told reporters Saturday. “I look at everything, not just the quarterback position, of how we want to play and what we want to do. I think Blake had the ability to extend plays for us, which I think is going to be helpful in what we have to get done.”When asked how Bortles was in terms of his decision-making and accuracy, Marrone said bluntly, “Good enough for me to stand here and say he gives us the best chance to win.”"

Jaguars have no better options and that’s sad

Chad Henne and Brandon Allen were the other options. Henne has already had and wasted too many opportunities to prove he can be a starter. Allen has played reasonably well but nothing about his game signals he’s any better than Bortles in the big picture. If anything this only reinforces how misguided the team was to not invest at quarterback during the offseason, even with a mid round pick to add more competition.

Instead they doubled down on Bortles by adding a running back and offensive line help. Thus far the results have not been what they hopes. However, with no other options they’re forced to do the only thing they can. That’s ride out the wave and see if he comes around with more time. Otherwise they will be heavily involved in the QB discussion come the NFL draft in 2018.