by Vincent Verhei

Yes, Blake Bortles ranks seventh among quarterbacks in total DYAR in this column. No, we don't really think he was among the ten best quarterbacks of Week 8. We're really not sure he was any good at all. Bortles' stats, even his advanced stats, were significantly better than his performance on Thursday night against Tennessee. That's nothing new for Bortles this season -- in fact, it's nothing new for his career. In fact, the disparity between Bortles' numerical profile and his on-field achievements is so great, it has us re-thinking our entire quarterback analytical process.

The issue is this: Bortles has a terrible habit of playing terribly in the first half of games. That's not entirely his fault -- the Jacksonville Jaguars, as a group, are usually a disaster before halftime. Then, in the second half, when the game has realistically been decided, Bortles "rallies" his team with some too-little, too-late touchdown drive(s) that boosts his statistics and narrows the game's final margin, but doesn't actually do much to help his team win.

Take Thursday night's game against the Titans, for example. Bortles' first throw resulted in a 9-yard gain on second-and-8 -- a modest play, to be sure, but something to celebrate because it was his only first down in the game's first 20 minutes. By the time he picked up another first down, five drives later, Jacksonville's defense had already given up 24 points. By the end of the second quarter, Bortles had gone 8-of-16 for only 64 yards, with a sack, and the Jaguars were down 27-0. Bortles then finally woke up, going 25-of-38 for 273 yards in the second half, with one sack and a 5-yard DPI. After picking up only three first downs in the first half, he had 20 first downs in the second, including all three of his touchdowns -- each of which left Jacksonville trailing by at least 14 points. That last touchdown came with just one second left in the game. At no point in the second half was this anything close to a contest, but DYAR still sees it as a good game for Bortles -- although he was in the bottom five quarterbacks in first-half DYAR this week, he was second in second-half/overtime DYAR behind only Oakland's Derek Carr.

This wasn't the first time Bortles has tacked on meaningless late touchdowns this season. He had two touchdowns against San Diego in Week 2, and both came with Jacksonville down by 31 points or more in the fourth quarter. His only touchdown against Oakland in Week 7 wasn't a completely wasted effort, but it still left the Jaguars down by 10 with less than five minutes to go in the game.

Between those three contests, that's six of Bortles' 12 touchdown passes this season that did little if anything to help Jacksonville win games. That's a lot of empty touchdowns for most quarterbacks, but for Bortles it's just another season.

Designating just what is and is not "garbage time" is a tricky proposition, but for the sake of this article we're going to define it as any play coming when the offense is trailing by 21 points or more in the third quarter, or by 14 points or more in the fourth. These are broad strokes, to be sure. There's a big difference between Bortles throwing a touchdown trailing by 14 points in the game's final minute, and Peyton Manning doing the same thing with 12 minutes to go. But these standards are simple enough to tally in one day, while still largely limiting our touchdowns to those that came after the game was decided. Since 2000, there have been 154 passing touchdowns that came when down by 21 points or more in the third quarter; only ten of those came in wins. And only 30 of the 990 touchdowns thrown when down by 14 points or more in the fourth quarter helped rally a team to victory. We removed those 40 touchdowns from our sample.



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Using those criteria, Bortles had four garbage-time touchdowns as a rookie in 2014, five in 2015, and six (and counting) this season. As best as we can tell (this is a little complicated for the Touchdown Finder at Pro Football Reference), the single-season record for garbage-time touchdown passes is seven, split by the father-son tandem of Archie Manning (1972) and his boy Peyton (2002). Bortles' career total of 15 garbage-time scores is still a long ways from Kerry Collins' record of 34, but remember that Collins started 180 games in the NFL. Bortles' start against Tennessee was his 36th. In less than two and a half years, Bortles has already thrown more garbage-time touchdowns than Tony Romo (14), Tom Brady (13), or Aaron Rodgers (9). In fact, besides those three, there are 13 retired quarterbacks with at least 200 touchdown passes with fewer garbage-time scores than Bortles has already, including John Elway, Johnny Unitas, Joe Montana, Y.A. Tittle, Len Dawson, Jim Kelly, Steve Young, and Terry Bradshaw.

All told, 25.9 percent of Bortles' touchdown passes have come in garbage time. That's the highest rate in history for any quarterback with at least 50 touchdown throws.

Highest And Lowest Garbage Time Touchdown Rates in NFL History Highest

Lowest Name TDs Garbage Garbage% Name Total Garbage Garbage% Blake Bortles 58 15 25.9% Russell Wilson 111 0 0.0% Randy Johnson 51 13 25.5% Frankie Albert 115 1 0.9% Billy Joe Tolliver 59 14 23.7% Jeff Hostetler 94 1 1.1% Archie Manning 125 29 23.2% Cecil Isbell 61 1 1.6% David Carr 65 15 23.1% Otto Graham 174 3 1.7% Sam Bradford 85 15 17.6% Rex Grossman 56 1 1.8% Vince Evans 52 9 17.3% Eric Hipple 55 1 1.8% Zeke Bratkowski 65 11 16.9% Jim McMahon 100 2 2.0% Derek Anderson 60 10 16.7% Arnie Herber 81 2 2.5% Jim Hardy 54 9 16.7% Steve Young 232 6 2.6% Kerry Collins 208 34 16.3% Ed Brown 102 3 2.9% Matt Cassel 101 16 15.8% Tom Brady 440 13 3.0% Bill Munson 84 13 15.5% Benny Friedman 66 2 3.0% Steve DeBerg 196 29 14.8% Bobby Layne 196 6 3.1% Marc Bulger 122 17 13.9% Bob Griese 192 6 3.1% Byron Leftwich 58 8 13.8% Tom Flores 93 3 3.2% Chad Henne 58 8 13.8% Aaron Rodgers 274 9 3.3% Cotton Davidson 73 10 13.7% Bart Starr 152 5 3.3% Lamar McHan 73 10 13.7% Frank Ryan 149 5 3.4% Don Majkowski 66 9 13.6% Johnny Unitas 290 10 3.4% Minimum 50 touchdown passes



Now, this isn't all on Bortles. Russell Wilson has never thrown a garbage-time touchdown pass in the regular season (he has three in the playoffs, all in last season's loss to Carolina), in large part because the Seahawks defense rarely puts him in that position. Wilson's Seahawks have only given up 21 points in a game 20 times since he was drafted in 2012; Bortles' Jaguars have already done so 26 times in barely half as many games.

So opportunity is part of the issue, but only part of it. Even adjusting for that, Bortles is far better on a per-pass basis than most of his peers when facing big deficits. Since 2014, there have been 39 quarterbacks with at least 50 pass attempts when down by 14 points or more in the second half. This includes many bad quarterbacks, but also some very good ones, including Aaron Rodgers, Carson Palmer, Drew Brees, Ben Roethlisberger, Philip Rivers, Matt Ryan, Cam Newton, Peyton and Eli Manning, and more. By now it should be no surprise that Bortles leads that group in attempts (283), completions (183), yards (2,382), or touchdowns (18). But his completion rate of 65 percent is also in the top 10, and his 8.4 yards per pass is second only to Rodgers' 8.5. Bortles isn't just a quarterback who gets to play against a lot of soft, prevent defenses -- he fares better against those prevent defenses than most any quarterback in football, even when those quarterbacks are also playing out of deep holes.



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That phenomenon has carried over to this season too. Bortles has 67 pass plays this year when down by 17 or more points -- nobody else has more than 35. Bortles is averaging 7.2 yards per play in those situations, with a DVOA of 30.8%. All other quarterbacks in the league are averaging 5.2 yards per play, with a collective DVOA of -11.1%.

Fact is, most quarterbacks who are bad enough to be facing big deficits in the first place don't get better later in games. All quarterbacks trailing by more than 21 points in the fourth quarter this year have a collective DVOA of -12.2%. When the margin shrinks to 15 to 21 points, the DVOA remains basically unchanged, at -10.1%. And in any game that could reasonably called close, with the margin at 14 points either way, the DVOA is just -7.2%.

Is there a way to harness Bortles' talent and unleash it in the first and second quarters, before the Jacksonville defense has a chance to render the entire exercise moot? If so, perhaps the Jaguars could find themselves in fewer blowouts and more shootouts. We'll find out what the Jacksonville brass thinks soon -- they will have to decide by May whether or not to activate the option for Bortles' fifth year. By then we'll really know what they think of their garbage-time king.