Blake Bortles Faces The Hard Truth
I guess 3 seasons is the statute of limitations about giving a player a pass based on them having a funny name as at this point everybody seems about done with Mr. Blake Bortles.
The Bort is having a rough go of things lately. The Jags have turned over a new leaf, booting out human pep talk with no substance Gus Bradley to go with the angry gritty old tough guy mentality of Tom Coughlin and Doug Marrone. None of that drum circle good vibes crap. We’re back in the shit. Bortles doesn’t get a pass anymore, in the same vein that he can’t pass to begin with.
I was rooting for Bortles. Part of me always will, despite him looking like my Dad (THIS MAN IS 25 YEARS OLD). But it’s clear the Bort may have reached his peak, and that peak is garbage time super hero. He looked bad in his first year (fine), took some positive steps his second year (good!), then regressed and just showed he may have been shit all along last year (SAD!). Bort has all the physical tools to be a good QB, but the mental stuff just isn’t there. He’s had his chances to turn things around, and if he still can’t beat out crappy QB pasta Chad Penne for the starting job well that probably marks the end for ol’ Borty. He’ll languish on the bench or get released and probably have another job before Kaep does anyway.
I mean how pathetic is it that Bort can’t beat out Chad Henne. Chad Henne gave up trying to be a starter 3 years ago. You can tell, because he hasn’t tried to find another job like most journeyman crap QBs do. Josh McCown fought behind the lines for years trying to be a starter again and by golly he pulled it off, good for him. Real bootstraps guy that Josh McCown. He’s like Matt Moore, he found a comfy spot where he can play in a pinch if necessary but mostly he can get a sweet paycheck, play backyard ball at practice, and not get hurt. Now he’s back in contention and I have to wonder if he even wants the job. being a backup QB is a sweet gig.
So the sun may be setting on our friend Mr Bortles, who can then go and find his true calling: being a domesticated toothless suburban Dad with 3 kids (only 1 of which he really wanted). He drives a minivan. He is the middle manager at a local bank branch but can’t move up thanks to “office politics”. He has a reasonable house and likes to hold BBQs to feel important. He goes hunting, but only once a year with old college buddies and they never catch anything, just drink beer in the woods. He has an old dilapidated boat that he bought once in a shed in his backyard. He plans on refurbishing it, but he’s had it for years and his wife keeps yelling at him to get rid of it, but he can’t, because that boat represents the last vestiges of his independence. He also coaches the elementary school’s pre-school team and he’s a little too hard on the kids. be the man you were always meant to be, Blake. Be Mr. Bortles, and operate the neighborhood carpool.
Happy comic 700! Hopefully none of you went blind with the eclipse yesterday. I saw a 99.2% eclipse and it was decidedly meh, I give it a solid C.
I too saw the eclipse, now I can’t see anything anymore.
Bortles may need a change of scenery where the sun will keep shining. I heard the Cardinals might need a replacement for Palmer soon.
He’s five years too young. Besides, the Cardinals sign /good/ QBs on their second wind. They draft the guys who don’t go anywhere.
Go Bort
saw on reddit that he is a southpaw that throws right handed
As a resident of the St. Louis area, we experienced about 30 seconds of totality during the eclipse. Dave 99.2% comes nowhere close to how incredible totality was.
I saw the eclipse 6 hours away in Tennessee. It was even worth the 14 hour drive home.
I got rained on during the moment of totality and missed it. This is Trump’s America.
Every time I hear Bortles’ name, I immediately think of the Simpsons and the “Bort” license plate. Which, now that I say it, is the exact license plate that Bortles would have on whatever his non-minivan/SUV car happens to be.
Me too.
1)
“So the sun may be setting on our friend Mr Bortles, who can then go and find his true calling: being a domesticated toothless suburban Dad with 3 kids (only 1 of which he really wanted). He drives a minivan. He is the middle manager at a local bank branch but can’t move up thanks to “office politics”. He has a reasonable house and likes to hold BBQs to feel important. He goes hunting, but only once a year with old college buddies and they never catch anything, just drink beer in the woods. He has an old dilapidated boat that he bought once in a shed in his backyard. He plans on refurbishing it, but he’s had it for years and his wife keeps yelling at him to get rid of it, but he can’t, because that boat represents the last vestiges of his independence. He also coaches the elementary school’s pre-school team and he’s a little too hard on the kids. be the man you were always meant to be, Blake. Be Mr. Bortles, and operate the neighborhood carpool.”
So… kinda like Tomsula the Mic Rula, with minimal differences?
2)
Poor Bort. I hope he somehow finds his groove. Jacksonville needs some relief and some success, they can’t keep losing double-digit games a season like this.
3)
Maybe it would have been funnier to have Coughlin be the one yelling at Bort instead of Marrone? Or would that have been way too cruel to poor Bort’s psyche?
4)
If Bort does exit the starting job like this, that means Derek Carr is the clear(and only) winner out of the 2014 QB draft class, discounting the probably-stirring grave of Bridgewater and the sleeping enigma that is Janeane Garafolo. Interesting in retrospect…
The ironic thing about this comic is that the eclipse here in Jax showed up in only a tiny part of Jax as the clouds covered most of the eclipse.
Also, it’s the Sunshine state. Just wanted to push that fact in there to acknowledge the joke.
As someone who mocked the Jags mercilessly for actually drafting Bortles, I’ll take a step back and defend the man. The Jaguars have mishandled his situation so badly everyone involved should be out of the NFL. First they reached but fine. Okay. You see his talent, it’s undoubtedly there. But he’s a project QB, and they knew that drafting him. So they set up a plan for him. He’ll get a redshirt year. Perfect. Rodgers had wonky mechanics coming out of Cal, sitting behind Brett Farve helped him fix that and become the most talented current QB. But then they put him behind Chad Henne, and when Chad Henne predictably does Chad Henne things, they panic and succumb to public pressure and put Bortles in because they need to justify their reach of a pick. But Bortles wasn’t ready, and it was clear that with the pass rush he was defaulting to doing what he’d always done instead of the new mechanics he’d been coached into.
So the second season comes around. Bortles clearly needs fixing his mechanics, which as should have been clear from the previous season and every other qb ever who has tried to fix their mechanics in one offseason that you need more time than that to do so. But Bortles wasn’t an abject disaster, and they still want to prove he was worth the third overall pick. So they put weapons around him. They put resources into the offensive line. And it seems to work, because Bortles takes a step forward in his statistics. However, all the problems from the first season were still there, they were just masked by all his garbage time production.
So for the third season, even more is put on Bortles’ plate – and he still needs to fix his mechanics.The expectations are sky high because the defense should be better and the offense had a lot of production. And to be fair, the defense is better… and that exposes the illusion that the offense was good. Crushed under the weight of expectations, Bortles crumbles and the Jaguars once again disappoint.
The failure cleans out the staff that mishandled his situation, but it’s probably too late for Bortles. Now he needs to prove himself to a new management that has no ties to him, and the whole thing with his mechanics has become a mental block for him. But the new Jags management seems fine with it, since they don’t get anyone to push him, so Bortles is just competing against himself because let’s face it, no one is looking at Henne and thinking, yep, that’s who I’m getting behind as my quarterback of the future. And after an offseason where he once again seemed to be making progress, the passs rush brings back his old mechanics. He gets in his own head, his teammates are losing faith in him. Allen Robinson calls him out in practice and that somehow makes its way out of the building. Allen Robinson, who by the way, had several drops in that preseason game, some of which made their way into Bortles’ lowlight reel and some of which were Henne passes, so maybe Robinson should pipe down a little, and so should everyone else. Bortles might be on the fast track to Bustville but there’s plenty of blame to go around.
thank you.
Don’t insult Matt Moore by comparing him to Chad Henne because Matt Moore is actually good. Also, Josh McCown will be be the Jacksonville Jaguars 2018 starting qb.
On the bright side for the Jags, this QB class looks really good. Darnold, Mayfield, Rudolph, Rosen, we’ll see what happens this season, but there are a lot of names that, as of now, look like really good prospects for the 2018 draft.
Also congrats on 700 Dave!
yeah! congrats on 700!
The sun would not in fact set on Mr. Bortles… for another two seasons. But then when it did, it did kind of happen exactly the way described here. Ironically, he would move to LA to back up a quarterback who famously did not know what direction the sun sets. [Shows flashback clip of Jared Goff answering incorrectly on Hard Knocks.]