Will Blaine Gabbert Remain Jaguars’ Starter?

The Jacksonville Jaguars underwent major upheaval this morning, firing coach Jack Del Rio. Additionally, Adam Schefter of ESPN reported the Jaguars have been sold to investor Shahid Khan.

Gregg Rosenthal of ProFootballTalk.com suggested Jaguars quarterback and former Missouri Tiger Blaine Gabbert could be lost in the shuffle:

"It’s hard to imagine that keeping Gabbert as the starter will be a prerequisite of the job. Only true franchise quarterbacks keep their gigs without competition when there is a big shakeup with the coaching staff or front office."

Rosenthal has been particularly unimpressed with Gabbert’s performance:

"Gabbert’s play this year raises serious questions whether he’ll ever be a quality starter. He was put in a difficult situation this season, but you can separate him out from that.It’s hard to teach pocket presence at the NFL level.  And it’s hard to remember a successful quarterback with worse pocket presence and accuracy than Gabbert at any point in his career.   Gabbert is the opposite of poised.These aren’t just the usual rookie struggles. Christian Ponder has had difficulties, but he makes a handful of plays each game that show he could be a quality player. Gabbert hasn’t done that."

Tiger fans will likely be outraged at the thought of Gabbert not being a great NFL quarterback, but the truth is he was drafted far too highly because the Jaguars fell in love with his strong arm. In a pass-heavy spread offense, Gabbert only threw for 16 touchdowns and tossed nine interceptions. I attended Blaine Gabbert’s pro day in March and did not see an NFL-caliber quarterback. Here’s an excerpt from the write-up of my pro day notes:

"Gabbert had mediocre footwork in college. Since his pro day workouts, it seems to have gotten even worse. He occasionally left his feet while releasing the ball when dropping back from center, but he very constantly released the football with both feet in the air when he rolled out from under center. When he rolled to the left, he’d occasionally keep his center of gravity too low, and it would look awkward when he straightened up to throw the ball.Additionally, Gabbert dropped his center of gravity too low on rollouts to the left, which forced him to take longer to throw the football. Although he had a nice spiral and velocity on his passes, he threw them with such a high arc that they sometimes took too long to get to the intended receiver. This is a problem because it gives defenders more time to get to the ball and knock it down."

Gabbert’s pro day was less than impressive, but his pocket presence and ability to read a defense, two traits that cannot be assessed at a pro day because the quarterback doesn’t go against a live defense, were his biggest weaknesses coming out of college. Gabbert often bailed on a clean pocket and ended up forced to throw the ball away or tuck it for a small gain instead of stepping up in the pocket to pass the ball downfield.

In terms of his ability to read a defense, Gabbert often locked in on his primary receiver and forced the ball to him whether he was open or not. He rarely went through a set of progressions on passing plays, and struggled to even make the right read on zone read runs. Typically an inability to even correctly run zone read plays is far from indicative of the capacity to read and understand NFL defenses.

Gabbert will probably never be the franchise quarterback he was drafted to be, and will probably not start for Jacksonville next year. New coaches usually want to live or die by their quarterback, not somebody else’s draft choice. The right move for Jacksonville’s next head coach will be to sign a competent free agent to a three-year deal with Gabbert as the backup going into 2012. If Gabbert doesn’t show improvement, the Jaguars’ coach can get rid of him and draft a quarterback of his own to develop.