The 2013-2014-college football season was a magical one for the University of Central Florida. Hometown hero Blake Bortles led the Knights to the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl. This bowl-game appearance was the first in UCF history.
Now that the season is over, the next big date in Bortles’ calendar has to be the NFL draft. CBS Sports as well as many other primary sources for sports news have Bortles ranked as the second top quarterback(QB) coming into this year’s NFL draft and a projected 5th pick overall. Bortles has worked himself into a very flattering conversation. After Bortles showed NFL teams what he could do at the NFL combine and Pro Day there are talks of him possibly going 1st overall to the Houston Texans.
On paper, Blake Bortles looks like the ideal NFL quarterback. He stands at six feet-four inches tall, and weighs 232 pounds. The perfect storm of Bortles’ size and performance this season made room for comparisons to Pittsburg Steelers’ Superbowl winning QB Ben Roethlisberger. Such comparisons have benefited Bortles’ enough to put him in conversations regarding whether or not Houston should pick him first overall in the upcoming draft. Ultimately, it depends on which way Texans’ general manager Rick Smith and his staff choose to go. Draft a defensive player like Jadeveon Clowney, who is the clear-cut superior physical specimen at the defensive end (DE) position; or take a chance at landing a franchise QB who can possibly bring the franchise back to serious contender status.