Breaking down Tennessee Titans in SI’s Fantasy Football rankings
By Will Lomas
Stay away from: Marcus Mariota #144 overall, QB27
Recent stats, 2018: 2,528 passing yards, 357 rushing yards, 13 total TDs, 8 INT
Marcus Mariota is one of the best quarterbacks in the league in hurry up drills and when the game matters most. The game just seems to slow down for him at that point and when he can call his own plays he seems to get into a rhythm quickly.
That is an incredibly important skill to have if you want to be a good quarterback in the NFL, but it really doesn’t do much for you in fantasy football. Being great in a 2-minute drill can win you a game, but it doesn’t do much for your stats during the other 56 minutes of game time.
Not only that, but with a young “offensive guru” in 2018 the Tennessee Titans were one of the most run-heavy teams in the NFL. While I have hope that Arthur Smith will change that, he really hasn’t come out and said anything that makes me feel better about that hope.
He defends former OC Matt LaFleur in this low volume passing attack by saying that there were many weeks where that style of play was the game plan for the Tennessee Titans all along.
I just don’t know. While I expect Marcus Mariota to put up better numbers than that, just how good are they going to be? Only once in Mariota’s career has he had 20+ passing TDs and last year he had his lowest number total touchdowns in his career.
Piling on even more, Derrick Henry looks like a redzone stud and Arthur Smith supposedly had a hand in creating and developing the redzone game plans. There is no way he is going to look at Henry’s short area domination from last year and decide that they need to start passing more in the redzone.
You may notice a little bit of a contradiction here in my optimism at the WR/TE position but my doubt at QB. The reason for that is that I just expect Mariota to miss games at this point in his career. I desperately hope I am wrong and that he plays a full season for the first time in his career, but FF teams are built on stats not hope.
The product should be better on the field this year, but you would be a lot better off drafting a fantasy football QB that is going to have to throw it 50 times per game because his defense is so bad rather than a good QB with a solid run game and defense supporting him.