Tom Coughlin on Jaguars QB Blake Bortles: ‘I like the way he responds to adversity’

Tom Coughlin has no doubt the Jacksonville Jaguars have the right man at quarterback in Blake Bortles.

Bortles proved plenty of his doubters wrong with his strong showing in the playoffs last January, nearly guiding the Jaguars to the Super Bowl.

‘In the playoffs, he played his best football’

Coughlin, the Jaguars’ executive vice president of football operations, sees that and plenty of other reasons that Bortles can allow the Jags to remain a contender.

“He’s a tough, resilient son of a gun,” Coughlin told Bob Papa and David Diehl on The Opening Drive. “He can run. People don’t give him a lot of credit for that, but he can and he will. I like the way he responds to adversity. He’s taken a lot of shots over the course of his very young career. But if you do realize anything about football, in the playoffs, he played his best football. And we did not turn the ball over in the playoffs, which gave ourselves every opportunity to win.

‘He’s very level-headed’

“We have an outstanding defense. Blake plays right to the defense. We’re a very good run/play-action pass team. We’ve made progress on third down. We’ve certainly got that as a goal. But his resilience, his toughness both mentally and physically, his response to opportunity to be in big games, he’s very level-headed. Just as John Wooden said, you can’t be affected one way or the other, whether people are blowing smoke at you or telling you you stink. You’ve got to maintain and he’s been able to do that.”