JAGS NO SWEAT FOR JETS
No matter how many losses ultimately pile up, the rebuilding/reloading/re-whatevering Jets simply cannot afford to fall to Blake Freakin’ Bortles and Amos Alonzo Marrone on Sunday. The Jets are a better team than the number crunchers suggested this summer. A historic bunch of losers, the geniuses insisted. A clown show destined for infamy, the brainiacs claimed.
It was a fun narrative until, you know, the Jets kicked the collective derriere of a 2016 season playoff team last week. Oh sure, nobody is suddenly proclaiming that these Jets are postseason material, but it was always a ridiculous notion to think this team would be historically inept.
The Jets (1-2) have a realistic chance of beating the Jaguars (2-1) on Sunday at MetLife Stadium for a couple important reasons:
1) Bortles isn’t good at football, and
2) Doug Marrone is a mediocre head coach.
First things first: Bortles might be coming off the best winning performance (four TDs, no turnovers, 128.2 passer rating in a 44-7 triumph over the Ravens) of his career, but he’s been a train wreck for the better part of three years. The 2014 No. 3 overall pick has nearly as many pick-sixes (6) as wins (13), for crying out loud.
His mechanics are a disaster. His decision making is horrific. His pocket presence is atrocious. He has no feel to play the most important position in American team sports.
Nice guy with a track record for tremendous garbage-time fantasy football production, though.
Bortles has always been a turnover machine. He’s a mistake waiting to happen. When he drops back, Jaguars fans cringe in anticipation of a blunder.
The man had an NFL-high 63 turnovers from 2014-2016. He has committed a Mark-Sanchezian 66 turnovers in 49 career games. He’s as reliable as your local weatherman.
Bortles didn’t resemble that mistake-prone guy in the Jaguars’ 410-yard eruption across the pond last week. He played smart and savvy football, which only increases the odds that he’ll flop this week.
“He’s a good quarterback,” Todd Bowles said with a straight face on Wednesday. “Everybody has some bad days, but he’s playing well right now. And he’s carrying them. He throws great back-shoulder fades. He throws great timing routes. He’s got great accuracy. He’s got a strong arm. And he can run as well. So, he’s playing at a high level right now. We just got to try to slow him down.”
Trying to slow down Bortles is like trying to slow down a turtle.
Bortles, after all, has a career 58.8 career completion percentage, which is hard to fathom considering that virtually any competent signal caller can break the 60% threshold in this day and age. He’s 13-35 as a starter. He has an 80.2 career quarterback rating. He had seven multiple-turnover games last season. These are not good things, people. “The biggest thing with Blake is probably psychological,” Jacksonville tight end Marcedes Lewis told Pro Football Talk Live radio on Wednesday. “I think mentally, him understanding that we’re only going as far as he takes us.” Guess the Jags aren’t going very far. Bill Walsh, I mean, Marrone, told the NFL how much he thought of his quarterback by claiming this summer that he’d “like to run the ball every play.” Talk about giving your signal caller a vote of confidence. With coaches like that, who needs enemies?
To that end, Bortles has nearly 22% fewer pass attempts per game in the first three weeks than he did in his first three seasons when he was slinging it around 37 times each Sunday.
Marrone wants rookie running back Leonard Fournette to be the engine of his team. The 6-0, 228-pounder is going to force defenders to make a lot of business decisions. The prime directive for Bowles’ defense this week is clear: Stop Fournette and turn the game over to Bortles, who will almost certainly screw it up.
Last week, the Jets bottled up Jay Ajayi (11 carries for 16 yards), who has a similarly bruising running style. If they do it again, Bortles simply isn’t good enough to save the day.
Marrone isn’t some sort of schematic genius to overcome his quarterback’s shortcomings. He was a competent/quality NFL offensive line coach, who went 15-17 as the Bills head coach before quitting on his players.
He opted out of his Bills contract thinking that he was a shoo-in to fill the Jets vacancy. Woody Johnson, however, wisely passed after Bills players and members of that organization publicly and privately shed more light on the mediocre coaching candidate. Marrone apologists positioned him as something he never actually was: a very good head coach.
The Jets might not be destined for the playoffs in 2017, but there are tougher challenges out there than beating a team led by Doug Marrone and Blake Bortles. This one is winnable.