The Jacksonville Jaguars are likely to draft a quarterback at some point in the 2013 NFL Draft, but the biggest question is can Blaine Gabbert turn into the franchise quarterback that the team drafted him as in 2011? Former Jaguars head coach Mike Mularkey spent a year as the Jaguars head coach with Gabbert and talked with Mike Florio on PFTLive a bit about the Jaguars, including on whether or not he thinks Gabbert can be a franchise quarterback. "I'll say this; I watched a lot of tape on Blaine (Gabbert) prior to going there and interviewing for that job and there were some things that were going against him his rookie year," Mularkey told Mike Florio when asked if he thought Blaine Gabbert could be the Jaguars franchise quarterback. "Basically he wasn't drafted to be the starter, he was a true junior coming out of the draft, which is hard to do. He was supposed to be sitting back and being groomed, but kinda thrown into the fire and not a lot of help around him that rookie year with some of the positions around him to help him." While it's true Gabbert had little to no help his rookie season, he at least had a running back in Maurice Jones-Drew who led the NFL in rushing, but Gabbert still struggled mightily to be an effective passer. It also still begs the question as to why you would trade up to the Top 10 for a quarterback you didn't plan on starting out of the gate, but that's another discussion for another post. "We came in here and we felt like with the coaching and the system we were running we felt like he got better and he was getting better up until that injury," Mularkey continued. "Forecasting out whether he's going to be one of those franchise quarterbacks I can't do that. I still think... The thing I saw was improvement and that's what we wanted from him, to see if he could improve from rookie year to the second year, and we think he did that. We tried to help him by bringing (Justin) Blackmon and Cecil Shorts coming and showing up and maybe becoming a future star, but with no run game, our run game was hurt and we had a lot of injuries, he's just really never had the chance that you'd like to give the guy." Source: SBNation.com
i see what he's saying. however, it's becoming increasingly possible that gabbert will only be good in this league if everything around him is going perfectly (i.e. Alex Smith, Matt Schaub, etc.). A true franchise QB is able to overcome some hurdles, put a team on his back, and get through some rough times. Gabbert has definitely not done any of that, which is a concern.
