2019 will likely prove to be the most pivotal year of Tennessee Titans quarterback Marcus Mariota’s career.
The team has taken the offseason to build the supporting cast the signal-caller needs to perform at a high level, but there are still plenty of questions marks surrounding whether or not he’s up to snuff to take on the role of franchise quarterback.
In fact, Pro Football Focus recently pinned him as the Titans’ biggest weakness heading into 2019.
“Marcus Mariota has had some good moments during his time in the league, but he has been far from the difference-maker that he was drafted to be,” they wrote. “Since 2015, his 93.0 passer rating from a clean pocket ranks 30th among the 35 quarterbacks who have thrown at least 500 passes over that span. His clean-pocket, turnover-worthy play percentage of 3.2% is tied with Eli Manning, Ryan Tannehill and Jay Cutler for 27th, and that’s simply not good enough for a starting quarterback.”
As far as turning the ball over is concerned, it’s true that Mariota’s touchdown-to-interception ratio is a troubling one, currently standing at roughly 1:1 over the course of the past two seasons.
Between 2017 and 2018, Mariota has thrown 24 touchdown passes and 23 that resulted in turnovers.
But regardless of how certain specific statistics and percentages like “turnover-worthy plays” are calculated, how often the ball ends up in the hands of an opposing team’s player ultimately comes down to a team effort.
It’s going to take a lot of improvement from each player on the Titans’ roster to make this team a strong one that can contend in the postseason — and this comes down to much more than Mariota making a few tweaks.
