Tennessee Titans Fantasy Focus 2017: Marcus Mariota

Marcus Mariota has high expectations leading the Tennessee Titans into the 2017 season, but will he be someone to own in fantasy football?

Heading into his third NFL season, Tennessee Titans quarterback Marcus Mariota stands poised to become one of the league’s new stars. But is he a fantasy football star? Well, that hasn’t quite happened — yet.

In his second season, Mariota threw for 3,426 yards and 26 touchdowns with another 349 rushing and two scores. He only threw nine interceptions. They’re solid numbers, but not quite among the game’s fantasy elite just yet.

The biggest drawback for Mariota is that in 27 career starts, he has just three 300-yard games. He averaged 228.4 yards passing per game, hardly the stuff of a big-time fantasy quarterback. The Titans rely too heavily on their running game for Mariota to be a top-notch fantasy starter.

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With some of the weapons added this offseason, that could certainly change. The Titans receiving corps certainly is better now than what he has had in his first two seasons. In two seasons, he also has already missed five games because of injuries. Those are the drawbacks. But there are plenty of people who believe Mariota is set to reach fantasy stardom.

In fact, 4for4.com, which does its rankings based on computer projections, has Mariota rated as its fifth-best quarterback heading into this season. That’s ahead of Russell Wilson, Cam Newton, Matt Ryan and Ben Roethlisberger.

And other than Roethlisberger, you’ll likely have to take all of those quarterbacks ahead of Mariota. Sound a little off?

Perhaps, based on those numbers from his first two seasons. But if you start looking at the improvement he made from his first two season seasons, it might not be a stretch. His touchdown total from 2015 to 2016 jumped from 19 to 26. It wouldn’t be surprising to see him improve on that total again. But should he be ranked ahead of some more established veterans?

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It’s a bit of a leap of faith, but in the grand scheme of things, once you get past the top three or four quarterbacks, there’s not a lot of difference. And considering you can get Mariota in, say, the seventh or eighth round — as opposed to Ryan in the fourth or fifth — you might be better off.

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