Preseason battle with Raiders perfect opportunity for Blake Bortles

Since Jared Goff is expected to rest, Blake Bortles has the perfect opportunity to shine for the Los Angeles Rams on Saturday against the Oakland Raiders.

Back in the offseason, the Los Angeles Rams made an easy decision to bring Blake Bortles on board as the backup quarterback to Jared Goff since the cheap price was simply too good to turn down.

Nothing against Sean Mannion since the former backup never did anything wrong for the Rams, but in comparison to Bortles, it’s not even worth debating.

From all of the experience gained over the years as a starter for the Jacksonville Jaguars to the extra motivation for a potential starting job down the road on a different team, there are plenty of reasons to love the potential surrounding Bortles in 2019.

Obviously, the preference for Los Angeles this season would be to never have to use Bortles unless it was towards the end of the year when starters were resting, but also the team wants to make sure he can be relied on just in case.

Rightfully so, Sean McVay will most likely take a similar approach as last summer when he rested most of the starters for the preseason to avoid any sort of risk for an injury, meaning Saturday’s game against the Raiders could result in some solid action for Bortles.

As mentioned before, one of the main reasons why Bortles seemed so excited to sign a one-year deal with Los Angeles during the offseason was the opportunity to eventually earn another starting job down the road elsewhere.

Since the Rams seem set on Goff for the long run, Bortles knows that any chance of a future starting job will need to come on a different team, but the chance to work under an offensive mastermind in Sean McVay should payoff for the former first-round pick.

But instead of jumping too far ahead to the future, the main focus for Bortles and the Rams is on making sure they take advantage of Saturday’s game against the Raiders to help prepare for the real action come September.

Even if Bortles only ends up playing a few series before giving some of the other quarterbacks a chance to show off what they got, this should still provide Los Angeles with some reassurance the team made the right choice at backup.