If there was one thing we knew about the Steelers’ 2017 season as we lived it — one where a coach getting escorted from one of the worst bars in the Western world on New Year’s Eve and summarily breaking his pelvis couldn’t crack the top-five list of insane moments — it was this: The end, however it came, was going to be spectacular.
And the end came on Sunday afternoon. It didn’t happen in Minneapolis. It didn’t happen in Foxborough. It happened at Heinz Field, at the hands of one Robby Blake Bortles.
The pride of Oviedo, Fla. The apple of Jason Mendoza’s eye. The patron saint of one of the few decent parody Twitter accounts. Blake Bortles. The Steelers are on an ice floe, and Blake Bortles set them adrift.
It’s appropriate, really. The weirdest season had, in its way, the weirdest possible end. Because for all the things Blake Bortles is, what he isn’t is a particularly good NFL quarterback. All told, he’s probably closer to bad — but on Sunday, that couldn’t have mattered less.
For every off-target throw — he went 14 for 26 and put grass-stains on his share of balls — there was an effective checkdown. He didn’t turn the ball over. He didn’t take a sack. He rushed for 35 yards, including a crucial 16-yarder in the fourth quarter on one of Jacksonville’s eight third-down conversions.
“Blake Bortles this, Blake Bortles that,” strong safety Barry Church said. “All he did was dominate their defense.”
I laughed a little at that. Because Bortles didn’t dominate the Steelers’ defense … right? That wasn’t what happened, was it? The Steelers’ loss was about their own utter schematic failure, and their own inexplicable coaching decisions, and a first-quarter that was the football equivalent of ending up behind the eight-ball immediately after your break, and their hubris.
That’s why they went down, right? Not because of anything Bortles did. Eventually, though, I came around. He may well be big-picture bad, and it’s impossible to imagine that team beating the Patriots if they play similarly in the AFC championship. But say this about the dude: He did his part.
Midway through my laugh, I remembered the 45-yard bomb he threw to Keelan Cole with 11:21 remaining that eventually let the Jags reopen a two-touchdown lead. It was the single biggest play of the game (non fourth-down division). Who should’ve been laughing, really?
“One thing I learned is when you talk negative about him, he comes out and just proves you wrong over and over again,” cornerback A.J. Bouye said. “He did it against Seattle. He did it the first time [against the Steelers in October]. He did it today. I got a lot of respect for him.”
It’s impossible not to feel the same. Bortles, over the course of his career, has been more of a meme than a quarterback. There are a few reasons for this.
1) The pick-sixes. He throws a lot of them, including a three-game streak against the Texans. “I’ve gotta be a better tackler,” he said at the time. It was one of the single best quotes of 2016.
2) “The Good Place.” This is where Jason Mendoza enters the mix. NBC’s “The Good Place” is a show about people navigating the afterlife. Mendoza, played by Manny Jacinto, is the cast doofus and, of course, a Jaguars fan. At one point, Mendoza — an amalgam of stereotypes about Jacksonville that I was unaware existed until the last few months — asks the character played by Ted Danson if the Jags had won a Super Bowl since his death.
“Oh you’re serious,” Danson says. “No.”
“Will they ever win the Super Bowl?” Mendoza asks.
“Jason, I can’t predict the future. But no,” Danson says. “They won’t.”
Mendoza name-drops Bortles constantly. At one point, he wears a jersey. At another key moment, he lobs a Molotov cocktail at a speedboat and yells “BORTLES.” And that leads us to …
3) His name. It’s objectively funny. Blake Bortles. Blurk Burtles. Bleep Blooples.
4) His general mediocrity. If Bortles was one of the 15 best QBs in the league, none of this would be a thing. He’s not, though, so it is.
5) Stuff like this.
Blake Bortles only caring about how his breath looks in the cold pic.twitter.com/pPicp9NlhX
— ATHLETIC TRIBE (@AthleticTribe) January 14, 2018
Again — this is the dude who ended the Steelers’ season. It’s perfect. Smart money is on him realizing how funny it is.
“I really don’t care. I couldn’t care less what anyone in the world says about me. I enjoy going to work every day with those guys in that locker room and the coaching staff,” Bortles said after the game. “I enjoy everything we do, and this is the type of thing that you dream of — to get opportunities to play in games like.”
In a week, he’ll get another opportunity — and the Steelers won’t. Of course that’s how it happened. They got beat by a meme. They died as they lived.
Sean Gentille: sgentille@post-gazette.com, Twitter: @seangentille
First Published: January 15, 2018, 12:57 a.m.