Blake Bortles and Jaguars offense still searching for answers

The Jacksonville Jaguars offense has been a dumpster for so far this season, which has been a jarring shock to most fans. Blake Bortles isn’t playing well at all and the players around him aren’t doing very much to ease his struggles. The team cannot run the football in any functional capacity and that means their struggles passing the football are just exacerbated. The team has no offensive identity and everything seems discombobulated. The worst part is, not even the players seem to know what the team can do well on offense at this point.

“I don’t know. I think we are still trying to find an identity. Find out what we do well,” Bortles said when he was asked what the Jaguars offense does well. “Obviously we are still trying to find different ways to run the ball. I think it comes down to execution and consistency. Like I said after the game on Sunday, nothing is going to be positive until we eliminate the pre-snap stuff. The mental errors, the pre-snap penalties and the turnovers. Those are the three things we need to eliminate in order to have any chance of being successful. Then, I think we will go from there.”

Hearing that the team is still searching for an identity on offense, after Game 6 in Year 4, is unsettling. To be fair, it’s only the second year in Greg Olson’s offense and Bortles hasn’t been on the team all four years, but the offense appears to be rudderless at this point and his comments to pull you away from that thought whatsoever. I think I know what the Jaguars offense wants to be, which is a team that can run the ball and go play-action down the field. That makes perfect sense because it fits what they have, but the team can’t run the ball.

In order to do the above, you have to be able to at least functionally run the football and the Jaguars running game is anything but that. So, what is the backup plan? Surely they have one, right? You would think that to counter act not being able to run, the team would move Bortles from the pocket more since he seems more comfortable right now passing on the move, but for whatever reason they seem to shy away from that. Bortles has been effective when he drops back to pass and picks up yards with his legs, but again he/the team seems hesitant to do that with any regularity. The offense also seems much more effective going up-tempo, but like those other things they seem reluctant to do so, even with how well the defense has played.

What the team wants their identity to be isn’t there and it appears like they had no backup plan.