Mike Mularkey Wants Blaine Gabbert To Be Given A Chance

We've touched on Jacksonville Jaguars quarterback Blaine Gabbert and his rookie season quite a bit, and I'm sure we will continue to do so as OTAs move forward and we get on the way to training camp. From the sounds of it, Jaguars head coach Mike Mularkey is already tired of having to talk about Gabbert and his progress and just wants people to hive him a chance and to stop comparing him to Cam Newton.

"Cam Newton was the No. 1 pick of the draft. He's a special type of player, but so is Blaine," Mularkey told reporters after Tuesday's practice.

"Cam Newton was obviously going to be your starter going into the season, whether that gave him an advantage over Blaine, I don't ... I really don't want to talk about players on other teams," Mularkey said. "The repetitions in camp are important, every one of them is important that you get. And I don't know the amount that Blaine got compared to anyone else in this camp last year, but I'm sure it wasn't the amount he would have liked ... or the coaches would have liked."

While it's true Gabbert came into Jaguars training camp as a backup, with the idea of having him not play right out of the gate, his reps in practice were plentiful. From what I personally saw at the practices I attended, Gabbert took just as many snaps as then starter David Garrard did, especially when Garrard went down with his back injury.

It looks like just another excuse being made for Gabbert, but you can tell Mike Mularkey is frustrated and already tired of talking about it. Once thing Mularkey does touch on that rings true however, is that it's unfair to just side-by-side compare quarterbacks, especially when their situations are entirely different. We've touched on this before, but would a guy like Andy Dalton have the same success in Jacksonville that he enjoyed in Cincinnati? Probably not.