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Gus Bradley cracks the door for Blake Bortles

While the Jaguars have said Chad Henne is their starter, Gus Bradley left a crack for Blake Bortles.

Mike DiNovo-USA TODAY Sports

Jacksonville Jaguars head coach Gus Bradley said that Chad Henne was still his starting quarterback on Monday afternoon, but it wasn't exactly a glowing endorsement of the veteran.

"Yeah. I’ll address that now in saying that we’ve been dealing with all scheme; offensively, defensively, special teams. We have not had a chance to talk about personnel," Bradley said when asked if Henne would start against the Indianapolis Colts on Sunday. "After looking at the tape I thought he had a tough day, he had 14 hits, and then on top of it the missed assignments that we had at other positions."

"That’s the truth right now without evaluating anything and if you’re asking me right now, yeah Chad Henne is our starter," Bradley said.

It took Bradley nearly 30 seconds to answer a yes or no question about the team's starting quarterback, but he also noted that the conversation to move to or put rookie quarterback Blake Bortles in the game hasn't really come up.

"No, that part hasn’t come up," Bradley said when asked about Bortles. "I think we do need to get everything right and that’s just as a team we need to get things right. It wasn’t based on discussions of if we get everything right now get Blake in there. It just hasn’t come up."

The fact that the discussion of Bortles hasn't even started seems a bit odd to me, but Bradley did seem to crack the door when he was pressed more on the quarterback position.

"We haven’t even talked about that part of it," Bradley said when he was asked if he left the door cracked for a quarterback change. "It’s hard. I know what you’re asking but I can’t answer that right now. Right now I can just say that was not part of our discussion. We looked at him and said we’ve got to do something with the protection regardless of who’s in there. We’ve got to get these things right. Those were discussions we’ve had up until this point."

Reading between the tealeaves, it seems like that is going to be part of the discussion going forward. I don't think it's going to change before Sunday, but it's possible that the staff will begin thinking about a possible switch at the position, because they've tried just about everything else. There's going to be a point where a change has to be made, simply because you've got to try something different.

Bradley also seemed to brush off that the offensive line was a reason the team hadn't discussed putting Bortles in the game, noting that it's been more about when they feel Bortles is ready than anything else, but also reiterated that the discussion of Bortles being ready or not hasn't really happened yet.

Something makes me think that conversation will start this week.