The Tennessee Titans have a lot of questions remaining to be answered surrounding the quarterback position heading into 2019.
Can Marcus Mariota stay healthy for a full 16 games? Will Ryan Tannehill continue to perform as a highly reliable insurance policy? Could the team save room on the final 53-man roster for Logan Woodside?
Despite all this, the Titans are still in the most enviable situation at the position right now, according to NFL.com’s Gil Brandt.
Brandt recently ranked the most and least enviable quarterback situations in the league and placed the Titans at No. 1.
This is what he had to say about the team.
“You might be surprised to see the Titans here, given that Mariota is heading into the fifth and final year of his rookie deal and still hasn’t quite answered the question of whether or not he’s a franchise quarterback,” he wrote.
“But this ranking is as much about the man behind Mariota as it is about the former No. 2 overall pick. Before we get into that, I have to say, I really like Mariota. He has tons of upside, excellent speed and top-notch athletic ability, and he’s shown flashes of fulfilling his considerable potential. Ideally, the presence of Tannehill will help bring out the best in Mariota. But if Mariota should falter — notably, he has yet to play a full 16-game season — Tennessee could turn to the best backup quarterback in the NFL, a former first-round pick in his own right who showed in Miami he has what it takes to carry a team to the playoffs. (Though he missed the 2016 postseason with a torn ACL, Tannehill started 13 games for the Dolphins that season.) I can understand how some would find the uncertainty around Mariota off-putting. But the Titans are actually in the rare and quite enviable position of having two young, capable, starter-caliber options at the most important position in sports.”
Brandt does have a point here in placing the Titans at the top of the list, given how high Mariota’s ceiling is if he can stay on the field and how solid of a camp and preseason an experienced Tannehill has had.
Woodside, a former AAF signal-caller, has also given some impressive looks ahead of the season, and has made a decent case for himself in Nashville despite sitting at third-string.
The Titans quarterbacks will take the field yet again in Week 3 of preseason action against the Pittsburgh Steelers at 7:00 p.m. CT on Sunday evening in Nissan Stadium.
