Blake Bortles’ New Mentors Can Only Mean Good Things for Young Jaguars QB

Last year, there wasn’t a bigger surprise in the AFC at quarterback than Jacksonville’s Blake Bortles. Bortles entered his second season as even money to lose his starting job at some point. He finished it tied for second in the NFL in touchdown passes with 35—just one off Tom Brady’s league lead.

That breakout has spurred something new for the Jaguars in 2016. Something different.

Expectations for success.

If Bortles is going to meet those expectations and liberate the Jaguars from their long stay in the AFC South cellar, he’s going to have to show that last year was no fluke. That it was only the beginning.

And it appears Bortles is doing his part to demonstrate that just like the team he leads, he wants to take the next step as a player.

As Ryan O’Halloran of the Florida Times-Union reported, when the 2015 campaign came to a close, the Jacksonville coaching staff presented Bortles with some offseason homework. A “to do” list, if you will.

The first order of business was a research paper and field trip all in one. Offensive coordinator Greg Olson and quarterbacks coach Nathaniel Hackett wanted Bortles to pick the brains of two of the NFL’s very best at what they do.

That’s how, as Bortles told O’Halloran, he found himself talking to Carson Palmer of the Arizona Cardinals and Aaron Rodgers of the Green Bay Packers about the finer aspects of playing quarterback at the game’s highest level:

I bounced ideas off of them and asked them, ‘What would you do differently?’ Aaron was awesome. One of the things he said was, ‘Don’t try and score 21 points every time you have the ball.’ That’s what I’ve had to learn.

Carson was good. He’s laid back, and he’s an unbelievable quarterback and leader in the NFL. He said similar things. He said, ‘Just continue to build chemistry and rapport with the guys you’re with.’

It’s an interesting choice in mentors. Both veterans have had big-time success in the NFL. Rodgers is the athletic Super Bowl champion and NFL MVP. Palmer is the cannon arm whose NFL career has seen sky-highs and harrowing nadirs.

Their advice is sound, which should surprise absolutely no one. And it’s sound for quarterbacks at every level from Pop Warner to the NFL. Stay calm. Stay cool. Play within yourself and your offense and let your teammates make plays. It’s when signal-callers try to do too much that they run into trouble.

And it’s when …

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