In case you missed the news earlier this year, former Jacksonville Jaguars quarterback Blake Bortles has officially “moved out of the building” — the building that was his remaining home on the First Coast.
Bortles, 31, bought the home at 185 Admirals Way in the Harbor Island Estates community at Marsh Landing in Ponte Vedra Beach in July 2018 for $3,475,000 and sold it on April 28 for $5 million. The sale was first reported by The Daily Record in July, which identified the new owners as Donald and Rachel Hone, also of Ponte Vedra Beach.
The five-bedroom, 5.5-bathroom home was designed and built in 2005 by its original owners, Shelley and Jim Houlihan, who sold it to the Bortles.
The Hulihans and their custom home were featured in a Times-Union story in December 2015 when the home first went on the market. As frequent travelers to Southeast Asia, the couple developed a penchant for the Eastern aesthetic, reflected in the clean lines that frame their views of the Intracoastal Waterway, along with the unique blue roof tiles—hand-glazed and imported from Japan.
After grueling training on the court, Bortles was undoubtedly drawn to the quiet of home. It features a spa-like master suite, as well as an elegant loggia that spans the entire width of the house and opens to the vanishing pool through disappearing retractable screens. The 6,725-square-foot floor plan also includes a gorgeous kitchen with a wine cooler and double-sided fireplace in the living area, a richly-paneled office, a media room, a spacious outdoor kitchen and living area, two 50-foot boat slips, and separate guest quarters above the four-car garage.
The Admirals Way house wasn’t the only piece of real estate Bortles owned. He first purchased a three-bedroom, three-bathroom oceanfront home in Jacksonville Beach for $1.5 million in July 2015, and sold it in January 2020 to members of the Solomon family for $1.7 million. In May 2022, he also purchased a 0.7-acre parcel of land in Nocatee for $2.2 million, according to Action News Jax.
A native Floridian, Bortles was a standout at the University of Central Florida where he led the Knights to two conference championships, two section titles and back-to-back victories. As the third overall pick in the 2014 NFL Draft, Bortles played five seasons with the Jaguars, leading them to the AFC Championship Game in January 2018 where they were defeated by the New England Patriots.
After the playoffs, Bortles was given a three-year, $54 million contract extension, but was released by the Jaguars in March 2019 when the team signed Nick Foles from the Philadelphia Eagles, who had won Super Bowl LII the previous year.
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Since leaving the Jaguars, he has played for the Los Angeles Rams, Green Bay Packers, Denver Broncos, and New Orleans Saints. While Bortles may have lacked the quirkiness factor of Gardner Minshew (who took over after Foles suffered an injury in Week 1 of the 2019 season), he was a solid performer for the tail-town team. Bortles even had a recurring storyline on “The Good Place,” an NBC show set in the afterlife in which a good-natured Florida teenager talks endlessly about the Jaguars — and his favorite quarterback.
Bortles quietly announced his retirement from football in October 2022.