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The Jacksonville Jaguars will start their 16th quarterback ever in franchise history when Blake Bortles takes the field Sunday against the San Diego Chargers, and debut starts have been a mixed bag in the Jaguars history. Pride of the Jaguars inductee Mark Brunell was very ho-hum in his first start ever, throwing for just 138 yards with a touchdown and an interception, but he did show the spark that made a lot of fans love him with 44 rushing yards.
There's been some great starts and some massive duds in their starting debuts since 1995.
Here's what each quarterback's debut start looked like:
| Player | COMP | ATT | Yards | TD | INT | Sacks | RTG | Rush Yds | Rush TD |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Steve Beuerlein | 7 | 17 | 54 | 0 | 0 | N/A | 49.6 | 6 | 0 |
| Mark Brunell | 15 | 33 | 138 | 1 | 1 | N/A | 54.9 | 47 | 0 |
| Byron Leftwich* | 17 | 36 | 231 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 42.7 | 11 | 0 |
| Chad Henne | 19 | 42 | 202 | 1 | 1 | 7 | 57.8 | 1 | 1 |
| Blaine Gabbert* | 12 | 21 | 139 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 73.3 | 2 | 0 |
| Quinn Gray | 7 | 16 | 100 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 85.4 | 0 | 0 |
| Jonathan Quinn* | 12 | 27 | 88 | 1 | 2 | 4 | 34.2 | 33 | 0 |
| Jamie Martin | 6 | 11 | 71 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 74.4 | 6 | 0 |
| Jay Fiedler | 28 | 39 | 317 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 104.3 | -2 | 0 |
| Luke McCown | 17 | 24 | 175 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 91.5 | 10 | 0 |
| Rob Johnson | 20 | 24 | 294 | 2 | 0 | 3 | 145.5 | 31 | 1 |
| Trent Edwards | 12 | 25 | 140 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 62.1 | 18 | 0 |
| Steve Matthews | 23 | 35 | 252 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 86.8 | 10 | 0 |
| Todd Bouman | 18 | 34 | 222 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 68.5 | 8 | 0 |
| David Garrard* | 13 | 26 | 135 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 65.4 | 44 | 0 |
Bortles will be just the fifth rookie quarterback to ever start for the Jaguars on Sunday and the bar is pretty low for eclipsing the best rookie debut, as you can see. The bar for the best debut start ever for a Jaguars QB though, held by Rob Johnson, looks like it will probably hold there for a while.
Unless Bortles just goes absolutely bonkers on Sunday.