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It just amazes me how lost so many NFL coaches and executives are when it comes to developing young quarterbacks. They just don’t get it.
Blake Bortles shouldn’t have played last year.
He was so raw entering the league, and needed so much work.
And the Jacksonville Jaguars initially stated he wasn’t going to play.
They were being smart.
Then after two games, they lost some IQ points.
He started the last 14 games and threw 11 touchdowns and 17 interceptions.
One anonymous NFL head coach told ESPN recently, “He looked lost.”
Fair point.
He couldn’t read defenses. It was telegraph city.
Some experts feel he has a mechanical flaw in his throwing motion.
Jaguars GM David Caldwell doesn’t want to hear about it.
“He hurt his foot against Baltimore and he had shoulder inflammation issues later in the year — just a tired arm,” Caldwell said. “He’s fine tuned it and done a good job. I thought his mechanics were sound coming in — we thought he needed some work and he really did work on them. But the whole thing about him regressing? Nobody who said that was doing any research as to what was going on.”
Sounds like a defensive GM who has hitched his wagon to a guy.
Did he regress? Perhaps. But one thing is for sure – he wasn’t progressing.
The GM added, “”He was just doing things to survive last year.”
Why put your 22-year-old QB in a position where he was just trying to survive?
Why not just let him sit, develop him slowly by watching practicing and playing in preseason games. Why throw away the season with a guy who wasn’t ready to play?
Why make fans watch this crap? What a waste of money for Jacksonville fans.
Man, I love when teams let guys sit and learn like Steve Young behind Joe Montana and Aaron Rodgers behind Brett Favre. Tony Romo sat forever. How’d those situations work out?
Playing QB in the NFL is very, very, very hard. I know there are exceptions to the rule, but generally it’s best to sit for a while.
Here are a couple of flawed theories –
“Like a lot of quarterbacks, he should make that big jump,” Caldwell said. “He’s done all of the things in the off-season to put himself in position to have a good year.”
Do a lot of quarterbacks make the big jump? Did Geno Smith or Mark Sanchez? Did RG III, Andy Dalton or Colin Kaepernick. Did Ryan Leaf, Rick Mirer, Heath Shuler, Akili Smith. I could go on forever.
No, a lot of quarterbacks don’t take the big jump. Some do, most don’t. At this position, it’s far from a given that time heals all wounds and guys just “make the big jump.”
And off-season work does very little because there are no sacks, tackling, opposing defenses looking to confuse you.
You could work with all the top QB gurus out there, but that doesn’t very little prepare you for when the real bullets are flying.
So with all this being said, I have to admit I’m intrigued as a reporter to cover Bryce Petty’s development. It looks like the Jets are going to handle this one the right way – give him plenty of time. Coming out of Baylor’s simplistic spread offense, he has so much to work on, and it sounds like he will be given ample time to work out the kinks.
As Mark Knopler once sang, “That’s the way you do it.”
July 24, 2015
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