Mariota has room for improvement
Tennessee Titans quarterback Marcus Mariota had moments of magic during his rookie season, piling up more than 2,800 passing yards, throwing for 19 touchdowns and recording an 87-yard scramble to the end zone. What can he do for an encore? Based on the progress made by recent highly drafted quarterbacks between their first and second seasons as starters, it’s reasonable to expect even better numbers from Mariota in 2016.
But because he set such a high bar — the third-best rookie passer rating in the last 10 years — it might not be fair to assume he’ll make huge statistical strides, the kind made by the Jacksonville Jaguars’ Blake Bortles and the Oakland Raiders’ Derek Carr after less-impressive rookie seasons.
Mariota and Titans coaches are focused more on seeing improvement in other areas: taking fewer sacks, committing fewer turnovers and gaining a better knowledge of the offense.
“I’ve often said the most important year of football is between Year 1 and Year 2,” said Floyd Reese, the former Titans general manager. “Marcus could be satisfied with that face-of-the-franchise label for a while, and be satisfied getting to the point where you’re a contender every year, sometimes in the playoffs and sometimes not.
“Or he’s going to decide, ‘I want to be as good as I can be out there. I want to be the year-after-year perennial Pro Bowl quarterback.’ I think that’s the difference.”
STATS DON’T TELL FULL STORY
A number of quarterbacks recently have taken big statistical leaps in their second season as a starter.
The Indianapolis Colts’ Andrew Luck, for instance, bumped his passer rating from 76.5 in 2012 to 87.0 in 2013 and cut his interceptions in half. Bortles’ touchdown-to-interception ratio went from 11-17 in 2014 to 35-18 last season, and Carr threw for 11 more touchdowns and 700 more yards in his second season than he did as a rookie.
But Mariota’s rookie success — at least as far as his high passer rating (91.5) — could mean his second-year projections might more closely mirror others.
Teddy Bridgewater had an 85.2 rating in his 2014 rookie season with the Minnesota Vikings, and bettered himself in some respects last season. Playing more games, he improved his completion percentage, trimmed his interception total by three and improved his rating to 88.7.
A few years earlier, Cam Newton made one important step between 2011 and 2012 with the Carolina Panthers, throwing five fewer interceptions while boosting his rating from 84.5 to 86.2.
“You almost have to separate it a little, between the quarterback’s statistical numbers and how the team operates,” said Titans wide receivers coach Bob Bratkowski, who was the Cincinnati Bengals offensive coordinator when Carson Palmer became a starter.
“At times, quarterbacks are overly judged somewhat on their stats. The key ones to me are going to be completion percentage, interceptions and the things a lot of people don’t see, like doing things to allow the run game to be better.”
PERFORMANCE IN THE POCKET
The Titans expect to see Mariota improve his pocket awareness.
He was sacked 38 times last season. The main responsibility for protection falls on the offensive line, but quarterbacks can help by throwing the ball away when they feel pressure. Mariota was sacked on more than 26% of the plays on which he was pressured, per Pro Football Focus, the highest figure in the league.
“I’ve really emphasized getting rid of the ball instead of taking sacks,” coach Mike Mularkey said. “Marcus has been told an incompletion is OK. Live another down. But a sack can be catastrophic, so throw the ball away and move on to the next down.”
Mariota said he thinks a year’s experience will mean holding onto the ball less.
“Being comfortable in the offense, knowing where my outs are in terms of if we miss a protection, where I can get the ball out quick,” he said.
ATTENTION TO DETAIL
Mariota also should have better knowledge of the offense, especially with Mularkey streamlining it for simplicity.
“It starts with the verbiage and then goes all the way through,” Mariota said of the changes. “It’s a lot easier across the board now to get everyone on the same page.”
Familiarity with the offense will allow Mariota a wider variety of options when executing plays.
“If you’re a young quarterback and you’re trying to improve your second year, I think it involves detail,” Reese said. “Maybe last year your objective was on every pass play to locate the free safety and always throw away from the deepest safety.
“Well, this year, you take that and you add, ‘Are the corners playing inside or outside technique? Which linebacker can get to the tight end the fastest? Which linebacker will provide the best underneath help?’ Things like that.”
Bratkowski warns, however, that a little knowledge can sometimes be a dangerous thing for second-year quarterbacks.
“The biggest risk a second-year quarterback faces is that now he has attained a certain amount of knowledge and sometimes he tries to do too much, thinking, ‘Boy, I can fix everything and do this, that and the other,’ ” Bratkowski said. “That’s the risk is that they don’t stay in their boundaries. Maybe in Year 3 or 4, they can take it another notch up and do more things.”
GOING DEEP
Two other areas in which Mariota could improve his numbers are turnovers and deep passing.
While he only threw 10 interceptions in 12 games, he fumbled 10 times and lost six, tied for tops in the league. One reason was that he got sacked so often.
Mariota had the worst deep passing accuracy percentage (throws that travel more than 20 yards in the air) of any NFL quarterback in 2015, per Pro Football Focus. But having at least one more potential deep threat in free agent wide receiver Rishard Matthews is bound to help.
“You have to have a deep passing game within your offense,” Mariota said. “It’s got to be incorporated in some form or fashion. You can’t just limit yourself to underneath routes and let the defense kind of sit on those things. I’m all for it. I love throwing the deep ball.”
Mariota is approaching the second season with a healthy enthusiasm, earning praise from coaches and teammates.
“Just from listening to the coaches that were here last year, they feel really good about the steps Marcus has taken, even in the OTAs (organized team activities),” Bratkowski said. “They’re saying, ‘Geez, he is so much more comfortable and he looks very confident out there to me.’ ”
Glennon writes for The (Nashville) Tennessean, part of the USA TODAY NETWORK.