Fantasy Football: Bold Predictions for Week 13
The Jaguars Will Be Glad They Switched Quarterbacks
Blake Bortles had a good decent run in Jacksonville, but it looks like his time as the starting quarterback there has finally come to an end. They've installed Cody Kessler in his place, and this weekend they are going to be glad they did.
By the metrics, it looks like the team is making the correct call. Kessler has averaged a higher career completion rate than Bortles (64.5% to 59%, respectively) and has an interception rate 1.2% lower than Bortles. According to numberFire's Passer Success Rating metric, which tracks how often a passer adds points to his team's expected points total, Kessler is just 0.29% less successful when passing.
But I think we need to provide a little context for these numbers. Kessler put up most of these numbers -- which admittedly aren't great -- while playing for a legendarily bad Cleveland Browns team in 2016. His best (read: only) receiver was a quarterback that had caught only two previous NFL passes, and we can recognize now that the shot-callers on that offense were almost bad enough to make Baker Mayfield look like a bust. This Jaguars team has better receivers than any group he's played with before.
I think the fact that Kessler put up better or equivalent numbers to Bortles while playing on a significantly worse team should mean that the Jags offense should improve. In his one half of pinch-quarterbacking this season he had a good Passer Success Rate of 55.88%. Obviously there are other things at play here, but that's a higher rate than Patrick Mahomes and Philip Rivers. Again, he's clearly not a better quarterback than either of those two, but he should be better than Bortles.
Improved play and fewer turnovers from the quarterback position will help the Jags beat on their division rivals this week. And so will the Indianapolis Colts' 27th-ranked defense according to numberFire's metrics. The Colts offense has been on fire recently, but even though this isn't the same Sax-onville defense of 2017 they're still a good enough unit to keep the team in this one and especially at home -- they allow over 10 fewer points in home games versus road games.
With a little bit of help, Cody Kessler is going to lead the Jaguars to their first win since Week 4.
