The Tennessee Titans and Their New Quarterback

The Tennessee Titans have been surrounded by uncertainty since the end of last season. Before April 30th, the league wondered if the Nashville team would keep the second draft pick or accept one of the lucrative offers that were rumored. Question resolved: they kept it, as promised, and selected Marcus Mariota. Since then, the question has been whether the quarterback is ready for the NFL and how long his adjustment period will be.

Any rookie needs time to adjust to their new life. The pace is different and so is the quality of the opponents. This is even more true in the case of a quarterback. Any quarterback. But if this quarterback comes from a system like Oregon's, where the use of the spread offense is intensive, popular wisdom says that the adjustment period will be longer and more difficult. And that any team that signs a quarterback of this type would do well to adapt their playbook to make the transition more comfortable.

The good news for the Titans' fans? That Ken Whisenhunt, head coach of the Tennessee team, won't need to adapt much for Mariota to feel comfortable in their offensive systems.

The first and main criticism against quarterbacks raised in the spread offense is their inability to receive the snap right behind the center. That won't be a big problem for the Titans. Last year, the Nashville quarterback only started a third of the plays in that position. And on seven out of every ten occasions he did, the play ended in a run. On the other hand, over 80% of passing plays started in shotgun.

The second criticism is that these quarterbacks are not used to reading more than one or, at most, two progressions from their wide receivers. If the player they've decided to pass the ball to fails to run their route as decided, the quarterback is doomed to run.

But there are solutions to that, and one of the most obvious is to have a good pair of tight ends that make it possible for the quarterback to have an easy option in the intermediate game. Tennessee has two, and they are accustomed to these tasks: Delanie Walker and Anthony Fasano. Nothing spectacular, don't be fooled, but enough to give Mariota a break in desperate situations.

The other solution is to find a receiver good enough for the quarterback to know that by throwing him the ball, the wide receiver will take care of it. The Titans trust that Dorial Green-Beckham can become that player. Time will tell.

Does all this mean that Mariota's adaptation will be simple and without obstacles? Far from it. Especially because Whisenhunt has a difficult short-term problem on his hands. If the Titans want to make the most of their new quarterback's qualities, they would do well to include many plays to take advantage of one of his great strengths: his legs and his great accuracy when throwing the ball on the run.

It doesn't sound too complicated, but the Titans have a big obstacle to achieve it. And it's measured in kilos. Hundreds of kilos: that's how much the components of their offensive line weigh. The players that make up the line are cut from the same mold: monolithic masses with many centimeters and kilos, perfectly capable of applying a power blocking scheme (each player on the line assumes the individual coverage of a rival player).

But for an offensive system full of bootlegs, a zone blocking scheme is preferable, which requires smaller players (relatively, needless to say), but much more mobile. A line, in short, that can at least prolong vital seconds of protection for their quarterback while he moves to one side.

And that is Whisenhunt's dilemma. Does he bet on a scheme that favors an offensive line theoretically full of good young players, and in that case, confines Mariota to the pocket? Or does he give Mariota the freedom to move and then makes a unit that was undoubtedly among the worst of the line suffer again? The success of Marcus' landing maneuvers in the NFL will depend on the choice he makes.