In a match-up
UCF alum Bortles leads Jacksonville to statement home win
from last year’s AFC championship game, the Jags and the Patriots face off. But unlike last year, Jacksonville on Sunday prevails over New England 31-20. Also, other scores and more from across the league.
JACKSONVILLE — Many people wonder why Jacksonville Jaguars quarterback Blake Bortles doesn’t chide vocal critics by throwing barbs back at them.
What many don’t understand is that he does, just not via a diatribe. That’s not the Bortles way.
His way of chastising his critics is to go out and respond with his arm. Bortles did that Sunday, exercising plenty of demons in the process.
The former Oviedo and UCF star torched the New England Patriots, leading the Jaguars to a 31-20 victory during their home opener at TIAA Bank Field.
Bortles was 29-of-45 passing for 377 yards and four touchdowns, helping Jacksonville exact revenge on the team that kept the Jags out of last year’s Super Bowl and also shut up his critics — for at least a week.
The quarterback, however, did not celebrate and say, “Take that,” as one reporter suggested.
“Nah, I’ll leave that up to [the media],” Bortles said. “Why do you expect me to change?”
If he could always move the ball the way did Sunday, Jags fans and coach Doug Marrone would be quite pleased. And his critics would have far less material to pick apart.
“I think he made some really good throws today, thought he played with a lot of confidence and he knows and understands that he has to do that every week,” Marrone said of Bortles. “He catches a lot of [expletive] and today he’s gonna be OK. Everyone’s gonna be happy and tomorrow he’s gonna
have to come back and start working because he’ll be evaluated each Sunday. And he understands that.”
Bortles said the players cared more about improving to 2-0 than avenging last season’s loss to the Patriots.
“I think everybody kind of hyped the game up a little bit more than we felt the importance of it,” Bortles said. “It was our home opener, Week 2 and that’s just that. It wasn’t anything else. We expected to come out and play good and win the football game.”
Defensive end Dante Fowler, who sat out the first game of the season due to a suspension, said it was certainly great to see the offense clicking. It fired up the defense even more than usual and that led to some big plays.
Bortles made plenty of plays, even using his feet at times to rush for 35 yards on six carries, but he wasn’t the only one.. Second-year receivers Dede Westbrook and Keelan Cole had terrific games. Westbrook had the biggest gain of the day on a 61-yard catch-and-run for a touchdown that salted the game away in the fourth quarter, and Cole had the catch everyone was talking about, a one-handed snag that he pulled in for a 22-yard gain. Cole later later capped the scoring drive with a 24-yard touchdown catch.
Cole finished with seven catches for 116 yards, Westbrook had four catches for 83 yards and Donte Moncrief had four for 34. Running back Corey Grant also got in on the action in the passing game, catching six passes for 56 yards.
In all, Bortles hit nine different receivers.
The Jags rolled without top running back Leonard Fournette, who sat out due to a nagging hamstring injury, but back-ups T.J. Yeldon and Grant filled the bill, combining for 150 yards from scrimmage.
The offensive line protected Bortles well all day, allowing zero sacks and blocking nicely for the running backs. When starting left tackle Cam Robinson went down with an injury, Josh Wells filled in sufficiently.
“It was great watching that offense click like that,” Fowler said. “Man, when the offense can do that, we know we don’t have any worries. … They did a great job, Blake did a great job, offensive linemen did an outstanding job and the receivers did an excellent job, as well.”
Fowler was in on one of the biggest defensive plays of the day.
The Patriots were threatening with the ball inside the Jags’ 30-yard line, trailing by nine points, when Fowler got past big right tackle LaAdrian Waddle and reached out to strip Tom Brady. Fowler forced the fumble and fought to recover it.
“It was really cool just to make a play for my team being back the first week, showing the players, showing the coaches they can trust me … week in and week out,” said Fowler, a former Florida Gator star. “I got into the offensive tackle, who was doing a good job of keeping us away from Brady throughout the game, but we were getting there. … I knew we were going to get there eventually.”
Like Marrone said, however, it’s back to work Tuesday, and the Jags, who defeated the Patriots for the first time since 1998 and beat Brady for the first time in nine tries, will begin preparing to host Tennessee.
“We got our fans and everyone back into it and we were really excited to open up here at home and obviously the crowd played a big part in that,” Marrone said of the announced crowd of 68,527.
“Like I told the players, it’s the second game of the season and [we’ve] got a lot of work in front of us and [we’ve] got a division opponent next week.
“We’ll enjoy this win, we’ll make the corrections and we’ll move on.”