Brandon Allen could be first Jaguars QB off the bench

Blake Bortles will be the Jacksonville Jaguars starter for Week 1 of the regular season against the Houston Texans, but many people don’t believe he will make it through a full 16 game season. The real question is who is the first quarterback off the bench of Bortles either gets hurt or bombs, to which most fans hope it’s second-year quarterback Brandon Allen.

On Good Morning Football on NFL Network Monday morning, Ian Rapoport spoke about the Jaguars quarterback situation and seemed to indicate that the first quarterback off the bench of Blake Bortles gets pulled could be Brandon Allen, not veteran Chad Henne. Rapoport went further to say that Allen has support of some people in the building.

All of that makes sense logically, but it also seems to fly in the face of everything we’ve seen/heard with Allen this offseason. Allen has done well in the preseason, albeit he’s going against a lot of players who aren’t going to make a roster, but the tea leaves made it seem like the Jaguars didn’t really think that much of him as a quarterback of the “future” type.

It also makes the “open competition” that Allen wasn’t even considered for very bizarre. If he has support in the building, as Rap Sheet says, then why wouldn’t he be considered for the starting job in an open competition? If he’s likely to be the first one off the bench, again why wasn’t he part of the competition?

Perhaps it was just too late in the process to open it up to three players, but for those of you who wanted Allen to get a shot, it sounds like it’s possible he may if Bortles doesn’t improve.