News Flash: Blake Bortles had surgery to repair a right wrist injury on Friday.
News Flash: Alex Smith has signed with the Washington Redskins, making Kirk Cousins available on the open market.
Question: What do the Jacksonville Jaguars do now?
Blake Bortles is a keeper! Blake Bortles is garbage!
The Sports Interwebs will no doubt make Bortles – the hometown kid who made good – a polarizing pinata. He has risen from Oviedo to UCF to the NFL as a starting quarterback for the Jaguars.
Whether he is a keeper or not is the $19.1 million dollar question, now mixed in with the complicated math of whether the Jaguars should aggressively pursue Cousins.
Bortles is due that 19 mil on March 14 (the first day of the 2018 NFL calendar year) if he's still on Jacksonville's roster as of the 4 p.m. deadline. And if he is still rehabbing, the money is guaranteed and he will remain on the books.
The wrist procedure comes as a surprise, first reported on ESPN on Monday. The team confirmed the surgery, but has otherwise declined to provide any other details including a rehabilitation time-frame.
Cue more suspense and intrigue.
If Bortles is healthy by mid-March, the Jags can cut ties and pursue Cousins, although he will come with a Mad Money price tag. Cousins is likely looking at a deal in the five-year, $128 million range with roughly $75 million guaranteed. At 25, Bortles is four years younger, and the Jags are not obligated pony up a long-term deal.
My speculative tea leaves suggest that the Jaguars keep Bortles for a year, and then figure it out.
For all the grief that he takes, Bortles rose above his game-manager role during a season that needed another Brilliant Tom Brady Comeback to deny the Jags a berth in the Super Bowl.
Bortles was good, not great, in the AFC Championship Game, completing 23 of 36 passes for 293 yards and one touchdown. But there was no signature throw, especially on a deep ball, that made critics shut their mouths.
Bortles played well in three playoff games, throwing three touchdowns without any interceptions, and completing 57.6 percent of his passes for a steady 91.0 rating.
But he is not as sexy as Kirk Cousins, who is all over the NFL map in terms of new-home speculation, from Minnesota to New York (both teams) to Denver (where the smart money can be found).
Crunching numbers over the last three seasons, the statistics between the two quarterbacks are comparable: Cousins (81 TDs, 13,176 yards, 36 INTs) vs. Bortles (79 TDs, 12,020 yards, 47 INTS). The last number is offset by the fact that Bortles has cut down on a league-high 18 picks over the last two seasons.
Regardless, the banter on Bortles will continue, as it did after the Jags lost to the Patriots.
"Most of America is saying 'thank you' today," wrote Chicago Sun-Times columnist Rick Morrissey. "You might be sick of Brady and the Patriots' brilliance, but how would you have felt watching Jaguars quarterback Blake Bortles slinging it in Super Bowl LII? Exactly.
"...The Little Quarterback Who Could might make for a great story, but it doesn't make for great TV."
Outsiders can talk all they want, but unless Bortles is paying off teammates with hush money, the locker room has his back.
"We believe in Blake, he's a competitor, he's tough," Calais Campbell, the NFL's defensive player of the year, said after the 24-20 loss to the Patriots. "He went out there and played the game that he was supposed to play. I'm very impressed with the way he played today, and all season. He's been criticized but he's matured and grown so much this season. I'm just very proud of him."
The Little Quarterback Who Could may still keep on chugging, despite the gimpy wrist, and despite Kirk Cousins hanging around to potentially derail his dreams of becoming a franchise QB just a few blocks up the road from his hometown.
To Be Continued.
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