Marcus Mariota’s ‘greatness’ isn’t here yet, but it’s coming
ATLANTA – What was your first day of work like? Did you feel a bit queasy at your desk? Perhaps break out in a cold sweat when your boss’ eyes swept over you? Maybe even sneak off to the bathroom for a good long cry? (Come on, it wasn’t just us that did that, right?)
Spare a little sympathy, then, for Marcus Mariota, the No. 2 draft pick and presumptive Titans starting quarterback, who utterly and completely stunk up the Georgia Dome turf in his first two possessions on Friday night as a decent chunk of the NFL world watched.
But don’t spare too much sympathy for the former Oregon Duck, because: 1.) Mariota’s getting paid a ton of guaranteed money to play the most glamorous position in sports; and 2.) Mariota rebounded from his two garbage possessions to take control of himself and lead his team on a 90-yard scoring drive, in exactly the kind of steady way you’d expect from a Heisman Trophy winner.
“I could tell he was pissed,” Titans head coach Ken Whisenhunt said after the game, a 31-24 Falcons victory. “You like that in a competitor. To go 90 yards and score … you could tell he didn’t get flustered.”
Let the record show that Marcus Mariota’s first play in uniform was a handoff to Bishop Sankey, his first pass was a 12-yard completion to former Falcon Harry Douglas, and his first drive ended in an interception. That last was significant because, as we’d been told over and over all preseason, Mariota hadn’t thrown an interception in camp. When asked about the irony of losing his charmed mark so quickly against actual competition, Mariota didn’t even bother to muster up the energy to shrug it off.
“It happens,” he said, gripping the postgame podium with the demeanor and expression of a seventh-grader forced to read his book report before the class. “It’s football.”
Every football player — indeed, every professional athlete — is now schooled in the art of saying nothing while appearing to say something, of blending cliches and eye contact into an empty-calorie helping of news conference blandness. But Mariota, on this night, dispensed with any and all highs and lows of emotion. “I’m going to enjoy the moment,” he said, but it sure didn’t seem like it.
So it fell, then, to everyone else to offer up praise for the rookie, who finished the night 7 for 8 with 94 yards, an interception, a sack and a fumble returned for a touchdown. Oregon jerseys and T-shirts dotted the Georgia Dome, easily visible amid the Falcons red. Douglas, who caught a key third-and-long pass to keep Mariota’s third drive alive, overflowed with accolades.
“He’s cool, calm and collected, and that’s why he’s going to be good,” Douglas said. “To be so calm when you’re so young … that’s greatness right there. That’s greatness.”
The knocks on Mariota coming into the league were many and varied: He couldn’t handle a conventional offense, he couldn’t run a huddle-based attack, he couldn’t take a snap from under center. That kind of relentless, speculative criticism has to wear on you, even if you do your best to shut out the howling opinions of those beyond the sidelines.
What he did on Friday, then, was prove pretty much everyone right: He looked both flustered and composed, he looked both overmatched and competent. The struggles, you expect. The fact that he pulled himself and his team together and left the game on a high note should give Tennessee fans plenty of hope. He’s nowhere near “greatness” — heck, he’s still got to look up to see “decent” — but Marcus Mariota showed that he has the potential to get there. Solid effort for the first day on the job.
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Jay Busbee is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact him at [email protected] or find him on Twitter.
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