Blake Bortles and the Jaguars defeated the Buffalo Bills on Sunday afternoon in Jacksonville in a 10-3 final. It was a terrible football game to watch as neither offense could muster anything close to a consistent effort moving the ball.
Both defenses played well and the punters showed out, but a lot of the offensive issues were self-inflicted as neither quarterback could find any kind of passing rhythm. As it turned out for Jacksonville, their best offense was Blake Bortles scrambling out of the pocket, which led directly to their two scoring drives.
After barely sniffing the Bills’ half of the field for the first 29 minutes of the game, the Jags were able to get into field goal range thanks to a pair of lengthy Bortles runs and tie the game at 3-3 at halftime (like I said, it wasn’t exciting football). The Bills were shut out in the second half, and while the Jags weren’t exactly lighting the world on fire, they did manage one touchdown drive that was, again, fueled partially by the wheels on Bortles.
Bortles had 20 yards rushing on the Jags’ touchdown drive that culminated in a touchdown pass to Ben Koyack, and in total, he had ten carries for 88 yards on the game (including the final kneel down which counts as a -1 yard rushing attempt). Even with the kneel, that’s one more yard than he passed for, completing 12-of-23 passes for 87 yards and that one touchdown.
The Jags and Bills’ defenses and punters were the real stars of the day, but Bortles managed to be the leading rusher for either side, with his 88 yards being 13 more than LeSean McCoy and 31 more than Leonard Fournette. If you were wondering how best to recap the sloppiness of this AFC Wild Card matchup, that should sum it up just about perfectly.
