FanPost

It is time to bench Blake Bortles (permanently)

Steve Flynn-USA TODAY Sports

This past Sunday, the Houston Texans scored another win and that got me thinking...

"Just how shitty are the playoff odds for the Jaguars?"

The Jaguars are a reeling 3-5 team without a quarterback leaving the bye week, and while it is generally understood this isn't a good place for a team to be, I'm not quite so sure we are all on the same page on just how bad this is.

So let's look at prior teams in a similar position who made it to the playoffs, and see what we can glean from the past.

Playoff teams who started with at least five losses

Since the league moved on from the notion of "Central" as a divisional direction in the 2002 season, the NFL has seen 16 seasons come and go, and of those approximately 200 playoff teams the list is not long that contains teams who lose like we do.

2002 Jets

2008 Chargers

2011 Broncos

2012 Skins

2012 Bengals

2013 Eagles

2015 Skins

2015 Texans

2015 Chiefs

So assuming I didn't miss any five-loss teams along the way, we are at a hair over 4.5 percent of playoff teams having lost as much as our team has to start the season.

Losing within the division

Unfortunately for us, the percentages are even worse when we account for the fact that we have at least two divisional losses within the first eight games of our season as well.

2002 Jets

2011 Broncos

2012 Bengals

2013 Eagles

Four teams in almost 20 years, ya'll. Only two percent of playoff teams had multiple losses in their division as well as dropping five games to start their season (98% "nah" territory).

Why bench Blake (again)?

Besides the season being an almost guaranteed waste and the offense functioning like [insert wet fart noise], it is time everyone (including the front office) acknowledges that the Blake Bortles experiment has ran its course.

Blake has attempted over two thousand and five hundred tortuous regular season passes in his time with the Jaguars, which is easily a large enough sample size to know what you can expect from him even if you projected him "progressing" till the heat death of the universe.

So, knowing full well who Blake Bortles is and will likely remain being, let's take another look at the numbers for playoff teams who started as poorly as we have this season.

2013 Eagles (Team passer rating of 102.7)

2012 Bengals (Team passer rating of 88.1)

2011 Broncos (Team passer rating of 73.5)

2002 Jets (Team passer rating of 98.3)

And then there was only a single team since 2002 to make the playoffs, with a low passer rating and multiple divisional losses (truly a more generational of an event than all the generational runningbacks to come into the draft each and every year).

The season is cooked, and Blake is a known commodity.

But if this front office expects to see 2019 employed, perhaps they should start seeing what they really have in Cody Kessler, who has done remarkably better than Bortles at the same point in their career pass attempts.

"What if I like endless second chances?"

If for some reason you must be absolutely sure that we have officially crossed the Rubicon on the season being a wash before admitting to the obvious, the permanent benching of Bortles could start this weekend with a loss against the Colts.

Since 2002, I haven't been able to find a team that started with at least 6 losses (3 of which were divisional) and still go on to make the playoffs. Perhaps I missed the one team to have done that within that time frame, but even assuming I did we are looking at about a half of a percent of playoff teams having put themselves in that situation to start the season (at the very best).

A loss to the Colts and keeping Blake Bortles as your starting QB further into the season would be as heinous as extending a sub .300 coach.

And who in the hell wants to do that?

"Can we win more games with Kessler?"

Don't even worry about winning games this year, the season (from a playoff hopes perspective) is FUBAR, but we can (and should) get an early start at auditions for not-Bortles quarterbacks.

If Kessler can prove to be a part of the solution at quarterback moving forward, that would be resplendent! But we should be looking to get more out of our remaining games than digging for moral victories for a quarterback we should have started moving away from in 2016.

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