Jaguars' Wembley trip just one more step on Blake Bortles' fantastic journey

Blake Bortles wasn’t supposed to be starting for Jacksonville against the Dallas Cowboys at Wembley on Sunday. In fact, he wasn’t supposed to be anywhere near London at all. But then he wasn’t supposed to have been picked third in this year’s NFL draft, been MVP of the Fiesta Bowl against Baylor in January or even been playing for the University of Central Florida last year.

Then again, he was passed over by every SEC university coming out of little Oviedo High School near Orlando in Florida, where he was a reluctant quarterback and the school was also initially hesitant to make him its centrepiece.

In fact, the 22-year-old has rarely been the one who was supposed to do anything in particular at any point, yet he has always been “The One” once all the dust has settled. In that respect, he is a perfect fit for the Jaguars and, if both parties have the patience to endure the growing pains – the team are 1-8 for the season – the long-term prognosis is extremely positive.

Just ask one of his former head coaches, George O’Leary at UCF. He says: “Blake is a kid who takes things in his stride, learning from everything as he goes. He is mature, has great poise and never gets unsettled. He has all the physical attributes you could want at 6ft 5in and maintains an even keel, never too high or too low.”

O’Leary admits it took Bortles half of his sophomore year, having been a redshirt freshman, before he really “got it”, but then his growth curve was exponential, finishing his first full season as MVP of the 2012 Beef O’Brady’s Bowl against Ball State and going on to a stellar junior year highlighted by wins at Penn State, Louisville and Temple, an American Athletic Conference (AAC) championship and the big underdog moment of victory over Baylor in the Fiesta Bowl.

It was a similar experience at Oviedo High, where a tall young linebacker was virtually press-ganged into service as a quarterback in his sophomore year, running a limited wing-T offence. When it was clear Bortles could handle a lot more than repeated hand-offs to a running back, the coach changed the system around him. By the time he finished his senior year, he had amassed a Seminole County record of 5,576 passing yards and 53 touchdowns.

“He’s going to continue to try to get better at everything he does,” says Oviedo coach Wes Allen. “He’s not a kid who sits back and says ‘I’ve got it all. I’ve arrived.’

He’ll do everything in his power to make that franchise a better team. He’ll be the one who sits all night and studies the film and learns the protections and gets with the linemen and receivers. Blake has a great personality so people want to follow him, be around him, believe in him, not because he’s loud and boisterous, but because he puts in the work, and people see that.

‘He’s a great competitor’

Bortles’ high school work did not attract a lot of attention. He visited seven SEC universities, but none were interested in an “unpolished” quarterback. Only UCF and Western Kentucky made full scholarship offers; Colorado State, Purdue and Tulane also wanted him, but as a tight end.

“It just made him work harder,” says his dad, Rob Bortles. “He is a great competitor and the lack of recognition was just fuel for his competitive spirit. And he did everything on his own – if he felt he needed to work on something, he went out and did it himself. He initially had to compete with Jeff Godfrey for the starting role and even after UCF beat Ball State there was no conversation about what he might go on to do. Then he started his junior year and everything changed.”

In the same way as his junior year at Oviedo High was the “learning experience” for a spectacular senior season, so his university sophomore year became the forerunner to a notable coming out party in the inaugural AAC campaign. Bortles threw for 3,581 yards and 25 touchdowns, running in another six and finishing with a 163.4 quarterback rating, while UCF chalked up a school record 12 wins and their highest ranking, No10.

On the recommendation of several observers, Bortles petitioned the NFL for a draft “grade”, the system by which the professional ranks judge university talent and allow players to assess their potential worth. “It came back as a first-round grade,” recalls Rob. “It was the hardest decision he had to make because it would mean leaving a bunch of guys he had grown up with and he was worried about letting them down.

“They were supposed to be the senior class together, ready to take UCF to another level, and Blake felt he owed it to them to stick together. But he had a first-round NFL grade. So I asked him how he would feel if somebody else on the team had the same opportunity he now had, and he said he’d tell them to go for it. So he did.”

After Bortles declared for the draft, almost every team worked him out at the NFL Combine. He spent nearly eight weeks in Carlsbad, California, with veteran quarterback Jordan Palmer, working on his mechanics in a bid to add more polish to the “physical attributes” most pundits mentioned.

In the quarterback class of 2014, he was initially listed behind Johnny Manziel and Teddy Bridgewater. But the more coaches talked to him, the more they liked what they heard. He didn’t carry a fancy moniker like “Johnny Football” or hail from a football-rich programme like Louisville, where Bridgewater was touted as a No1 pick. (He went 32nd, to the Vikings.) But Bortles’ even-keeled, can-do approach and sheer robustness began to change opinions as draft day approached.

He, however, still had little clue where his future lay. His dad explains: “We had absolutely no idea what would happen at the draft. We were sat at one of the back tables in the green room, with the likes of Manziel and Jadeveon Clowney up front. Blake’s agent was talking to teams, trying to figure it out, but five minutes before the draft, Jacksonville were talking about going in another direction.

“If that was the case, it was supposed to be Cleveland at No24. Clowney duly went No1 and then Greg Robinson was taken by the Rams – and Blake’s phone rang. I said to my wife, ‘What’s he on the phone for? Doesn’t he know someone might call?’ And she said, ‘Yes, it’s Jacksonville. He’s the No3 pick.’ Which just goes to show no-one really knows what’s going to happen.

The players are all told ‘Hug your mum’ as the first thing after the phone call, but the cameras were still on Robinson when Blake hugged Suzy and me, and then his girlfriend, and Jordan Palmer, and by the time the cameras got to him, he was hugging his agent, and everyone just went ‘Why’s he hugging his agent first?’ It was a crazy period.

Another ‘redshirt year’?

From being “The Quarterback Who Wasn’t Supposed To Be Chosen First”, Bortles made the short journey up the Florida coast to find he was also “The Quarterback Who Wasn’t Supposed To Start In His First Season”. Jaguars head coach Gus Bradley was adamant his new acquisition should sit out his first season, another “redshirt year”. It would buck the trend of recent highly-drafted signal callers, the majority of whom have been required to justify their high salaries from day one, but it would potentially put Bortles on track to gain valuable experience without being right in the firing line.

He put in a respectable preseason’s work and there was a predictable clamour to have him start straight away when Bradley named journeyman Chad Henne as his starting quarterback, but the Jacksonville strategy was clear – give Bortles a year to learn and he would be ready to fire on all cylinders in 2015.

That plan lasted all of two and a half games. With the Jags down 30-0 at halftime to Indianapolis in their first home outing, Bradley sent the first-round pick out after the interval. A new era was born. Like his idol Brett Favre, Bortles was in at the deep end in his third game with his new team and, like the Green Bay legend, the story since has been a mix of touchdown passes (eight) and interceptions (13).

Jacksonville remain painfully thin for experienced talent and the growing pains are evident in almost every direction. Bortles has been sacked 19 times, which puts him in the top 10 of most abused NFL quarterbacks, and he is on course to equal Peyton Manning’s debut season for interceptions (28).

The Jaguars have been competitive in all but one of Bortles’ six starts, though, and it is now, in London this week and in the final third of the regular season, that we will see if he can repeat his successful learning curve from Oviedo High and UCF, and show if he is supposed to be on this stage.

Rob Bortles has no doubts. The family dynamic is clearly a supportive one, cultivated through years of junior sports travel and competitiveness with younger brother Colby – “We don’t have a dining-room table,” says Rob, “We have a ping-pong table. Everything is a competition between those two, even to see who can finish dinner first!” Between them, Rob and Suzy drove the boys thousands of miles around the south-east for football or baseball, and they all thrived on their sporting instincts. Rob was also a noted high school linebacker and wrestler while Suzy played softball.

Rose-coloured glasses are not part of the family accoutrements, though, and therefore Rob believes his son’s basic character traits, which served him so well through high school and college, will surface again.

No-one will out-work Blake. It is his passion and has been his dream since he was a kid. I know he is up at 5.30 some mornings to get in to practice. We call him ‘The Grinder’ – he just keeps working at something until he cracks it.

“Yes, he’s going to throw his share of interceptions but a lot of those are correctable as he learns from his mistakes, and he has a great coaching set-up at Jacksonville. Everyone is unfailingly positive and they all buy into that ethos. Despite the losses this season, everyone remains focused on the plan and they have so much young talent, that, if they do all stick it out together, they have a great future.”

‘The learning curve balances out’

If that is the view from the outside – albeit from an insider on the outside – it makes sense to test the temperature on the inside, too, via Bortles himself.

Twenty-two is still young in the NFL – the only younger starting quarterback is Minnesota’s Bridgewater, at 21 – but to talk to Bortles is to listen to a vastly more mature, tuned-in personality, at once aware of his own shortcomings to date but unfazed by the task ahead, equable yet determined.

He says: “Obviously there have been a lot of mistakes and a lot of learning opportunities, and it takes time to recognise that everybody is a lot faster on defence, but so are the guys you are throwing to, so I feel the learning curve balances out. It is up to me to get the offence in the right position and move the ball consistently, and we have been able to do that really well these past couple of weeks, although we’ve also had some breakdowns that have cost us points. As long as you learn from them, the experience isn’t wasted.

It is also cool to be going through this learning process as a group and, while we have a good mix, with some older guys who are all leaders, we do have a bunch of young guys who are starting in their rookie or second year and going through this together. The results are not what we want but we are getting better and you couldn’t want for a more enjoyable environment than Jacksonville.

OK, so there may be a touch of youthful naivety in that last statement – not many players would list north-east Florida among their top places to be – but ultimately, it is no wonder Bradley pulled the plug on Plan A and went to Plan Bortles after only three games. While comparisons to Favre and Buffalo’s Jim Kelly abound, the kid from Oviedo is a true individual who inspires with deeds not words, who takes the team ethic to heart and buys in completely to the “learn and improve” approach.

It will certainly be in evidence at Wembley on Sunday, when the contrast with the ego-driven Cowboys will be palpable. Bortles and the Jaguars aren’t supposed to win, you know, but then he’s been hearing that for much of his young life. It hasn’t stopped him yet.