The Jacksonville Jaguars quarterback handled it as well as he did Buffalo’s pass rush.
”It’ll probably never stop,” Bortles said Wednesday. ”There’s people that think LeBron James sucks, so if that happens, I’m sure there will be a lot of people that always think I suck.”
The latest insults came from Tennessee Titans safety Kevin Byard and retired NFL quarterback Chris Simms.
Byard told the Tennessean this week he wants to make New England’s Tom Brady looks like Bortles. Byard intercepted two of Bortles’ passes in the regular-season finale in Nashville.
”This is a playoff game, so I don’t really care if it was Joe Montana,” Byard said. ”You know what I’m saying? I’m trying to go out there and win the game. I want to make him look like Blake Bortles if I can and try to catch a couple picks. Tom Brady is a great quarterback, but it’s a playoff game.”
Simms told The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz on Tuesday that Bortles is 70th in his NFL quarterback rankings, below backups Chad Henne (Jacksonville), T.J. Yates (Houston) and Nathan Peterman (Buffalo).
Former Jaguars left tackle Tony Boselli called into the show to defend Bortles, saying it’s ”the most ignorant, asinine statement I’ve ever heard.”
None of it seemed to bother Bortles, who has been sullied all season .
Titans defensive end Jurrell Casey told a Nashville radio station last week that ”as long as Bortles is back there, if the ballgame is in his hands, he’s going to choke.”
Bortles also has been publicly ripped by Houston defensive end Jadeveon Clowney, Seattle safety Earl Thomas and Cincinnati linebacker Vontaze Burfict in the past two months.
”Players or peers talking about you is a little new,” Bortles said last week.
Bortles’ performance against the Bills was far from his best.
He completed 12 of 23 passes for 87 yards and a touchdown. He never settled into a rhythm [url=http://www.authenticsdetroitlions.com]Lions Elite Jerseys[/url] , and with the game tied in the second half, he stopped throwing and starting scrambling. He finished with 88 yards on the ground, becoming the first quarterback since Atlanta’s Michael Vick in 2004 to win a playoff game with more rushing yards than passing.
”There’s two different ways to look at it,” Bortles said. ”You kind of look at the numbers and look at the game and say, `You played terrible.’ Or you look at it and say, `Things weren’t going right here and you found a way to win and be efficient and move the ball and do different things.’ I think that’s how I feel about it. We didn’t have our A-game. I missed a couple throws. Things weren’t going well.
”But you know scrambling around and doing some different things, and guys making some plays, we found a way to score one more time than they did. That’s all you’ve got to do.”
The Jaguars (11-6) won the wild-card game 10-3, with the lone touchdown coming on Bortles’ 1-yard pass on a fourth-and-goal play, and advanced to play at second-seeded Pittsburgh (13-3) on Sunday.
Jacksonville beat the Steelers 30-9 in Pittsburgh earlier this season. Bortles threw just one pass in the second half as the Jags dominated thanks to five interceptions, including two returned for touchdowns, and a season-high 231 yards rushing.
Bortles completed 8 of 14 passes for 95 yards, with an interception.
”Hopefully we can throw less,” Bortles said. ”That would be awesome. Leonard goes off again and those guys up front play as well they did last time and we can run the ball up there and not have to throw at all. That was something that happened last time, but you never know. … It could be another one of those games or it could be you go up there and throw it 50 times.”
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The stage was set for another dramatic Super Bowl comeback for Tom Brady and the New England Patriots.
That’s when Brandon Graham delivered one of the few defensive highlights in the most prolific offensive game in NFL history, ripping the ball out of Brady’s hands for a fumble that gave the Philadelphia Eagles their first Super Bowl title in franchise history with a 41-33 victory on Sunday night.
”When the fourth quarter came we had to go out there and make a stop [url=http://www.authenticsgreenbaypackers.com]Packers Elite Jerseys[/url] ,” Graham said. ”As a defense we hadn’t been doing it all game. The offense carried us all the way through. At the end of the day we kept coming.”
Rookie Derek Barnett recovered the loose ball and Eagles fans began celebrating their first title since winning the 1960 NFL championship in what proved to be a surprise ending.
Brady had made the late-game comeback a specialty in winning a record five Super Bowl titles, including last year’s rally from 28-3 down to beat Atlanta in overtime. He also led late game-winning scoring drives to beat the Rams, Carolina and Seattle.
The Eagles showed no sign of slowing Brady down on Sunday as he threw for a playoff-record 505 yards and three touchdowns, carving up the defense at will on a night when the Patriots did not punt once or turn it over until Brady’s late fumble with New England on its 33 with just more than two minutes remaining and poised for a comeback.
That’s when Graham beat Shaq Mason off the line and reached his left hand out for Brady just before he was set to throw. Graham knocked the ball loose.
”I knew I had a one-on-one with the guard,” Graham said. ”I knew he likes to be aggressive so I tried to act like I was pulling. I snatched it right off and Tom Brady’s arm was right there and I went for the ball.”
Barnett landed on it in what will go down as one of the most memorable plays in Philadelphia history.
”BG made the play to win it,” Barnett said. ”It was a good bounce. Right into my hands.”
The fumble set up a field goal that gave the Eagles an eight-point lead and then the game ended when Brady’s desperation heave for Gronkowski in the end zone fell to the turf, sending green and white confetti to the field, emotional Eagles pouring out on the field and Brady on the ground in frustration.
The Eagles defense had offered little resistance for the first 57 minutes as the Patriots moved the ball on every drive, getting stopped only on a missed field goal by Stephen Gostkowski and a failed fourth-down attempt one play after Brady dropped a pass from Danny Amendola on a trick play.
But the Patriots had scored three straight touchdowns to open the second half to take their first lead of the game at 33-32 and still were in position to win after Nick Foles gave the Eagles a 38-33 lead on a TD pass to Zach Ertz.
”We stuck together,” defensive lineman Fletcher Cox said. ”Nobody panicked. We knew what we had to do to stop him. We knew it would come down to a couple of plays. We’ve been through the situation before. Guys just stepped up and make plays.”
Graham was the one who delivered, providing a defensive exclamation point in a game that featured a record 1,151 yards of offense by both teams, including 613 for the Patriots.
”They made one good play at the right time,” Brady said.
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