Marcus Mariota had his struggles with the Tennessee Titans last season, but a new offense could change the narrative around the quarterback.
By most measures, Tennessee Titans quarterback Marcus Mariota had his worst professional season in 2016. His yards per game (~215), touchdowns (13) and interceptions (15) were all career-worst marks for the No. 2 overall pick in the 2015 NFL Draft. However, it’s also hard to totally put all of that blame on him.
There’s a reason that Mike Mularkey was fired as head coach and while former offensive coordinator Terry Robiskie and others on the staff went with him. They simply were taking a roster that has vastly improved in recent years and not getting the most out of it. That was exceptionally evident on offense and in the case of Mariota.
For one, the play-calling in Tennessee was infuriatingly predictable. If you watched one Titans game last season, you could essentially determine the pattern that they would use in this regard and it would fit right in with the next game. For a team with one of the best offensive lines in the NFL and a dynamic quarterback under center, it was a gross misuse of assets.
That’s because, not only was the play-calling predictable, but it was not playing to the team’s strengths, particularly Mariota’s. Last season, Mariota was actually the best passer in the NFL when throwing out of play action. According to Pro Football Focus, Mariota had a passer rating of 119.0 when throwing out of play action, the best mark in the NFL among quarterbacks with at least 100 dropbacks. What’s more, he also had a touchdown-interception ratio of 9-3 on such plays.
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For comparison’s sake, Mariota was far worse when not throwing out of play action. His passer rating dropped to 70.7 (23rd in the league) with an 8-13 touchdown-interception ratio. Yes, that’s not good, but even more problematic is that the Titans coaching staff never recognized this seemingly as Mariota ranked just 13th in the NFL in terms of the percentage of his dropbacks that came out of play action (22.4 percent).
Now shifting gears to the future though, things look much more promising for Mariota. While new head coach Mike Vrabel may not have much say in the offense, new offensive coordinator Matt LaFleur will. And LaFleur has shown throughout his various stints in the NFL that he loves to rely on play action and has had great success doing so.
As he was the offensive coordinator for the Rams last season, Los Angeles led the league in play action percentage at 28.0. The heavy institution of play action is a massive reason for the improvement of Jared Goff from his rookie season to year two.
Instituting play action effectively simply makes a quarterback’s life easier. The play fake, even if not sold wholly, causes linebackers in the middle of the field and even, at times, defensive backs to take steps off of their coverage to be ready to defend the run. As a result, the passing/receiving lanes become more open and allow for a more potent passing attack.
Thus, with the arrival of LaFleur, we can expect to see far more play action passing in Tennessee than we did under the previous regime. And, as a result, we should see a much-improved version of Mariota. While he may not have Todd Gurley with him to help aid the sell of play action, he does have two effective backs in Derrick Henry and Dion Lewis.
More importantly though, Mariota has already proven that he’s at his best in the NFL when working from such plays. You would think it would be obvious to do more of that in the interest of succeeding, but it wasn’t to the previous coaching staff. With LaFleur, however, you can bet that Mariota will bounce back in a big way and, potentially, start to live up to the hype he had coming out of college.