This year, Blake Bortles has thrown just one touchdown while playing with the lead. That’s part of a larger development: over his three-year career, Bortles has thrown just four touchdowns while playing with the lead, with half of those coming in what looked like the Jaguars breakout game against the Colts last December.
Bortles has thrown 6 touchdowns while tied, which means his other 58 touchdowns have come while the Jaguars were trailing. If we count a TD pass while tied as half a TD pass while trailing, and half a TD pass while leading, that would give Bortles 7 touchdown passes while “leading” and 61 touchdowns while “trailing” since he entered the NFL in 2014. As you might imagine, that’s a pretty significant outlier.
The graph below shows quarterback data since 2014; the X-Axis shows touchdown throws while “trailing” and you can see that Bortles leads the NFL in that category. The Y-Axis shows TD passes while “leading” and as you could have guessed, Tom Brady leads in that category. Brady and Bortles represent the two biggest outlier in the entire graph:
Now, you might be thinking, hey Chase, Blake Bortles happens to play on a team that’s almost always trailing. So of course he would have this crazy split. And that’s true, but it doesn’t tell the story. Bortles has thrown 1,199 pass attempts while trailing, and 58 of those have been for touchdowns. That’s pretty good: a 4.8% touchdown rate while trailing is better than average, although you will have to decide whether that’s due to garbage time inflation or clutch performance (probably depending on your view of the quarterback in question).
But while leading, Bortles has thrown only 4 touchdowns on 205 attempts: that’s just a 2% rate, which is the worst of the 40 quarterbacks in this study. And that difference of 2.9% (difference due to rounding) is the biggest decline of any quarterback, too:
| QB | Trailing Att | Trailing | TD Rate Trail | Leading Att | Winning | TD Rate Lead | Diff |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Marcus Mariota | 501 | 19 | 3.8% | 197 | 17 | 8.6% | 4.8% |
| Carson Wentz | 330 | 6 | 1.8% | 162 | 7 | 4.3% | 2.5% |
| Ryan Tannehill | 984 | 37 | 3.8% | 336 | 21 | 6.3% | 2.5% |
| Ben Roethlisberger | 618 | 24 | 3.9% | 687 | 43 | 6.3% | 2.4% |
| Drew Brees | 1012 | 45 | 4.4% | 546 | 36 | 6.6% | 2.1% |
| Nick Foles | 371 | 8 | 2.2% | 213 | 9 | 4.2% | 2.1% |
| Ryan Fitzpatrick | 661 | 27 | 4.1% | 357 | 21 | 5.9% | 1.8% |
| Tom Brady | 401 | 20 | 5% | 905 | 58 | 6.4% | 1.4% |
| Kirk Cousins | 690 | 29 | 4.2% | 361 | 20 | 5.5% | 1.3% |
| Jameis Winston | 678 | 30 | 4.4% | 252 | 14 | 5.6% | 1.1% |
| Aaron Rodgers | 672 | 36 | 5.4% | 664 | 43 | 6.5% | 1.1% |
| Alex Smith | 610 | 20 | 3.3% | 549 | 24 | 4.4% | 1.1% |
| Andrew Luck | 669 | 41 | 6.1% | 499 | 36 | 7.2% | 1.1% |
| Matthew Stafford | 821 | 28 | 3.4% | 557 | 25 | 4.5% | 1.1% |
| Cam Newton | 560 | 26 | 4.6% | 562 | 31 | 5.5% | 0.9% |
| Peyton Manning | 381 | 20 | 5.2% | 379 | 23 | 6.1% | 0.8% |
| Matt Ryan | 924 | 43 | 4.7% | 508 | 27 | 5.3% | 0.7% |
| Joe Flacco | 901 | 31 | 3.4% | 445 | 18 | 4% | 0.6% |
| Russell Wilson | 600 | 32 | 5.3% | 559 | 33 | 5.9% | 0.6% |
| Teddy Bridgewater | 389 | 13 | 3.3% | 279 | 10 | 3.6% | 0.2% |
| Tony Romo | 207 | 16 | 7.7% | 201 | 16 | 8% | 0.2% |
| Trevor Siemian | 296 | 11 | 3.7% | 78 | 3 | 3.8% | 0.1% |
| Josh McCown | 529 | 20 | 3.8% | 129 | 5 | 3.9% | 0.1% |
| Derek Carr | 1017 | 47 | 4.6% | 383 | 18 | 4.7% | 0.1% |
| Eli Manning | 969 | 48 | 5% | 481 | 24 | 5% | 0% |
| Andy Dalton | 627 | 30 | 4.8% | 507 | 24 | 4.7% | -0.1% |
| Case Keenum | 197 | 5 | 2.5% | 167 | 4 | 2.4% | -0.1% |
| Colin Kaepernick | 643 | 25 | 3.9% | 244 | 9 | 3.7% | -0.2% |
| Blaine Gabbert | 296 | 10 | 3.4% | 63 | 2 | 3.2% | -0.2% |
| Tyrod Taylor | 393 | 19 | 4.8% | 266 | 12 | 4.5% | -0.3% |
| Sam Bradford | 585 | 22 | 3.8% | 265 | 9 | 3.4% | -0.4% |
| Kyle Orton | 237 | 9 | 3.8% | 123 | 4 | 3.3% | -0.5% |
| Philip Rivers | 982 | 52 | 5.3% | 523 | 22 | 4.2% | -1.1% |
| Carson Palmer | 515 | 31 | 6% | 476 | 23 | 4.8% | -1.2% |
| Jay Cutler | 767 | 38 | 5% | 218 | 8 | 3.7% | -1.3% |
| Dak Prescott | 160 | 9 | 5.6% | 208 | 9 | 4.3% | -1.3% |
| Mark Sanchez | 196 | 9 | 4.6% | 153 | 5 | 3.3% | -1.3% |
| Brock Osweiler | 356 | 12 | 3.4% | 250 | 5 | 2% | -1.4% |
| Brian Hoyer | 576 | 26 | 4.5% | 296 | 7 | 2.4% | -2.1% |
| Blake Bortles | 1199 | 58 | 4.8% | 205 | 4 | 2% | -2.9% |
| Average | 588 | 25.8 | 4.3% | 356.325 | 18.225 | 4.7% | 0.4% |
What does this mean? Well, we all can have our interpretation. I’m just presenting the data. What do you think it means?