Blake Bortles: How Nathaniel Hackett built his offensive

We all saw Jared Goff light up the league on fire in the first quarter of this season. There is a testimony of what a good coaching can do for a young quarterback, We said. Indeed, the Goff-Sean McVay marriage is as strong as everyone else right now. But there's a less sexy union, but equally impressive on the other side of the country: quarterback Blake Bortles and offensive coordinator Nathanial Hackett, Jacksonville Jaguars.

Hackett, who is a close friend of McVay, figured out how to play with Bortles. He never said that publicly, but Hackett knows that his fifth grade QB is flawed. He has not only heard from fans and media, but, more convincingly, from other offensive coaches over the years. Bortles has this slow and slow flow, which leads to accuracy problems and balls deflected to the line of scrimmage. (There were a few in Sunday's win against the Jets, including linebacker Avery Williamson's interception of Darryl Roberts.) Losing your order and starting to misread the pitch.

A bad coach sees Bortles and says, "He can not run my system." But a good coach says, "What kind of system can is it running? Because here's what's so true about Bortles: when he's right, he throws a pretty ball. There is touch and velocity. It can hit moving targets outside the numbers. He is more athletic than you think, able to hurt your opponents with difficulties and occasional reading options.

Bortles' talent, like most QBs, becomes more obvious when he launches in comfortable conditions. Hackett understood how to create them. The offensive coordinator must respect the wishes of head coach Doug Marrone and chief of staff Tom Coughlin, who want to play with a defense that is currently the best in football. But no NFL team, however dynamic, can win by distributing the ball 50 times per game. Hackett and Marrone understand that being a team in the foreground means, in large part, having a passing game derived from your racing game. It's not so much about turning the ball, but about look like you could run the ball. The defense of these formations and all the possibilities they present makes the defense predictable.

Two things happen in relation to a predictable defense: (1) You can create designer passes that exceed expectations, and (2) you can tell your QB what to expect. This makes it easier for him through progression readings. And maybe no offensive coach believes more in reading progression than Hackett.

This season, Bortles threw the ball on 49% of Jacksonville's first tries. Part of this is about game-action – the ultimate form of building your pass game from your running game. This is a particularly clever tactic with Bortles, because this wrong action creates a game that develops more slowly, taking into account the slowdown and release of Bortles. But Hackett also called a lot of direct spinoffs in the first game, and Bortles responded well.

While once these first passes were intended to simplify things almost strictly for the QB, in Jacksonville, they have now become a measure to represent him. Take Sunday, for example. Bortles dropped 12 times in first place, completing 7 of 10 passes for 68 yards (with a run of five yards and a bag).

Most telling is what happened in the fourth quarter. At just under 13 minutes from the Jets, with a 25-6 lead, the Jaguars threw the half T. J. Yeldon had the ball stripped by Avery Williamson. Cornerback Trumaine Johnson, who Bortles had earlier beaten at Donte Moncrief for a 67-yard touchdown, was able to bring the ball back to the 5-yard line. Anemic offensive New York found the goal area a few shots later. Now at just 25-12, the next-generation Jaguars have seen Yeldon swallow two and zero wins en route to a fast trio.

That was all the inspiration that Marrone and Hackett needed to go back to the next series, even with a double digit lead in the fourth quarter. They put the game in the hands of Bortles, making it back on seven of their next 11 games. Bortles completed six of those seven throws for 73 yards. Overall, he continued on his way through the first runs after entering Sunday with an astronomer rating of 123.8, according to Football Outsiders.

This is no different from the way the Rams play with Goff, who feastes on game-action passes. Like L.A., Jacksonville has a well-trained reception corps that plays with the attention to detail needed to perform multi-receiver road combinations. It really comes into play the third, the most critical of football, and another very critical for the Jags, who always run the ball with great frequency, which naturally creates more third setbacks. Most of these are third- and medium- / short-term situations, which offer man-to-man coverage, as this is the best way to defend clubs. Hackett was brilliant with his man-drummer designs. Jags receivers line up in stacks and clusters and cross intersecting roads, usually through shallow crossings. It's the same thing that veterans of powerful powers like the Patriots, Saints and Chargers have mastered over the years.

These games, like the first, define the reading of Bortles. Third and middle / short also brings more blitz. Bortles, who once could count on the ball to become frenetic under pressure, remained calm against the crowded pockets this season, moving confidently and keeping his eyes down. When those eyes did not spot comfortable jets, Bortles relied on her legs to take off or buy more time. Very rarely this season he forced throws in the blanket.

The most encouraging is that Bortles played this way Sunday against the Jets, seven days after playing as his old guy in a home defeat to the Titans. Two years ago, a match like the Titans defeat would have precipitated a fall of several weeks for the Jacksonville QB. Not anymore. With the best defense in football and now a clear identity in attack, it is reasonable to classify Jacksonville as "the team to beat" in the AFC.

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