The Tennessee Titans may have a star on their hands with Marcus Mariota, but fans need to temper their expectation a little bit. By no means am I saying not to be excited, but I am saying that it is important to remember that the team had months to prepare for a very vanilla defense, and his perfect Sunday performance shouldn’t be looked at as a standard.
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Having said that, I think it is time to go back and look at my projections for Week 1:
Projection: 26-38 (68%), 304 yards, 2 TD, 0 INT
Actual: 13-16 (81%), 209 yards, 4 TD, 0 INT
I thought that Mariota would be a very steady player that moved the offense down the field, but I thought that the team would try to put it on the running backs to score.
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Well, that wasn’t exactly wrong. What I wasn’t expecting was for the defense to load up the box and force the Titans to pass on 3rd down to put points on the board. Mariota threw three touchdowns in the redzone, despite attempts to pound the ball in.
I think that the Tennessee Titans quarterback will continue to be very productive, but I have to change my numbers a little bit here. While I was projecting a 3,500-ish yard season I will have to up that.
So, trying to be as calm as possible and react as little as possible to what I saw, here is what I think a projection of his SEASON statline should look like.
355-525 (67%), 4,000 yards (7.6 YPA), 34 TD, 12 INT
Behind the projections:
-I started with the pass attempts. 525 would make him 14th in the NFL last year and I really think that the Tennessee will try to establish a running game in Marcus Mariota’s first year. I had him projected around 550 for a 16 game season, but since he is already in the books for a 13-16 day, I dropped that number down.
-I think Marcus Mariota will continue to show off his excellent accuracy, but I don’t know how much I trust Justin Hunter (who will get a lot of targets) to catch balls effectively. This would make Mariota the 4th most accurate quarterback last year, I honestly based off of everything I saw in college, preseason, and Sunday I think you have to say that is fair.