Jacksonville Jaguars: Can Defense Make Blake Bortles a New Dilfer?

The old adage is that defense wins championships. Others say you can’t win without a quarterback. The Jacksonville Jaguars are about to find out.

They basically took down the Buffalo Bills on Sunday without a quarterback. Blake Bortles may have thrown the winning touchdown, but that was at a time when the Bills had squandered every other opportunity he gave them to win. Bortles completed just 12-of-23 passes for 87 yards. Keep in mind their defense entered the playoffs ranked 26th in the NFL (20th vs. the pass). By rights it should not have been that challenging for him. Yet it was.

So how did they win? Simple. The defense was lights out. No matter what the Bills seemed to do, they just didn’t have any answers for the Jaguars’ speed and discipline. Tyrod Taylor was a non-factor throwing the ball, as was late substitute Nathan Peterman. If the defense can continue to play like that in the weeks to come, is it impossible to think they might shock the rest of the AFC? That depends on whether they can sustain it.

Jaguars are on a proving ground with the all-time greats

There are very few examples scattered around the record books of a great defense carrying a QB-needy offense all the way to a championship. The 1990 Giants did it with Jeff Hostetler. One could argue the 2015 Broncos did it too. Yes they had Peyton Manning but it was a shadow version of the former great he’d been. However by far the greatest example teams look to is the 2000 Baltimore Ravens.

That year they were saddled with Trent Dilfer as their starting quarterback throughout the second half of the season. He completed less than 60% of his passes and threw 12 touchdowns to 11 interceptions. He wasn’t that much better in the playoffs. Still he ended up going 11-1 down the stretch and the team dominated Super Bowl XXXV over the New York Giants thanks to a suffocating defense that allowed seven points or less in eight of those games.

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Are the Jaguars capable of sustaining that sort of pace with the Steelers and likely the Patriots still to come? Fans are about to find out.