Start or Sit Blake Bortles in Fantasy Football Week Five?

Start or Sit Blake Bortles in Fantasy Football Week Five?

It’s week four, and that means that the fantasy football season is already at its quarter pole. Even though that’s not what the quarter pole is, we use that term anyway. The quarterback has become a topic of conversation throughout the fantasy football landscape, as the ol’ 300  yards, two TDs, no picks stat line no longer cuts it for fantasy football. Through four weeks, we already have twelve QB performances of 400 passing yards or more, surpassing the eight we had all last season. We average a 5+ passing TD performance a week, and there were three such games in the previous two years combined. It’s a passing league, so guys like Alex Smith have fallen by the wayside through no fault of their own. It’s a passing league, so it’s time to start taking big swings on guys at quarterback. With that in mind, should you start or sit Blake Bortles in fantasy football week five, as the Jacksonville Jaguars travel to Kansas City to take on the Chiefs?

There’s a lot of ways you can slice-and-dice Blake Bortles’ performances as they will apply to Sunday in KC. First, in his last half-season, he averages 18.52 fantasy points per game, which is good enough for the #8 QB during that stretch. His season-long pace is 4,458 yards, 28 touchdowns, and 16 interceptions. While the 16 interceptions are startling, he had five in back-to-back weeks against San Francisco and Tennessee last season and has just three through four weeks this season.

Second, there’s Blake Bortles without Leonard Fournette. Fournette will be out for the foreseeable future. Bortles has spent five games without his first round running back playing a snap over the last two seasons. First of all, that’s a ton of games. Second of all, he does far, far better without Fournette. He averages 65 yards a game more without Fournette and throws far fewer interceptions (one a game to three in five games). He also throws an extra half-TD a game. Without Fournette, Bortles is a better quarterback. Does it make sense? Not really, he’s missing a weapon. However, play calling overcomes this deficiency.

Bortles will get an extraordinarily easy matchup to exploit this week as the Jags take on the Chiefs. The Chiefs, excepting Monday’s Case Keenuming of the Denver Offense, have allowed multiple touchdowns to every quarterback that they’ve played this season. Rivers had three, Ben had three and a rushing touchdown. Garoppolo had two but would have had a third if not for his untimely death. Still, all three quarterbacks had at least 22 fantasy points against them, with Big Ben missing 39 by a hair. They’re a terrible pass defense, even though Case Keenum is too awful to take advantage of that. Blake Bortles is bad, but he’s not that bad.

Blake Bortles will need to throw the ball for the Jaguars to take down the high powered Chiefs offense on Sunday. Luckily for his fantasy football owners, he has been able to produce when tasked with doing just that. He’s riding a half-season streak as a starting QB in all formats and produces like mad without his RB1 in tow. He takes on a godawful pass defense that will allow him to throw all over them. Bortles is owned in just 33% of Yahoo! fantasy leagues, so he’s likely a plug-and-play option for you this weekend. If you’re questioning whether you should start or sit Blake Bortles this weekend, start him… even if you have to get him off the waiver wire.

If you want to see the flip side of “start or sit Blake Bortles,” check out our recommendation for Joe Flacco in week five!