Why I Think Mariota Is Good Enough To Be Our QBOF If Stays Healthy

[titans0021]

For me, it just continues to drive home how I already felt. There were those last year that were questioning his toughness. That was always garbage. But he’s clearly injury prone and needs to learn how to avoid hits.

Hopefully an improved offensive line, an underneath option in Humphries and Delanie back will help him get rid of the ball faster, but it also just comes down to him sometimes having to just give up on a play instead of trying to extend everything.

[KingTitan]

2 hours ago, titans0021 said:

For me, it just continues to drive home how I already felt. There were those last year that were questioning his toughness. That was always garbage. But he’s clearly injury prone and needs to learn how to avoid hits.

Hopefully an improved offensive line, an underneath option in Humphries and Delanie back will help him get rid of the ball faster, but it also just comes down to him sometimes having to just give up on a play instead of trying to extend everything.

The frequency of injuries is valid and concerning. 

However as one local radio guy said today, the durability question may not be answered until his career is over. Noted the many QBs that started with durability questions and went on to play long successful careers. Or QBs that may have flashed better years but missed more time. 

But these are conversations we've had a million times. 

Yes the toughness questions need to be shelved forever. To me it's no surprise he couldn't finish some of these games. He was held together with Kinso tape. (An act that made McNair legendary.) 

Toughness isn't the issue. Durability is.

[ShupacTakur]

1 hour ago, titans0021 said:

For me, it just continues to drive home how I already felt. There were those last year that were questioning his toughness. That was always garbage. But he’s clearly injury prone and needs to learn how to avoid hits.

Hopefully an improved offensive line, an underneath option in Humphries and Delanie back will help him get rid of the ball faster, but it also just comes down to him sometimes having to just give up on a play instead of trying to extend everything.

Also, am I the only one who cringes at the designed QB runs? I have since the Mularkey days. I'm sorry but it's just plain stupid. I don't care how good of an athlete he is. Scrap it and let him grow from the pocket. If he wants to take off after everything breaks down and use his athleticism to scramble, that's one thing, but actually drawing it up for him to take more hits than necessary is dancing with the devil at this point.  

[Airness McNairness]

23 hours ago, TwoToneBlue said:

https://www.paulkuharsky.com/news/marcus-mariota-was-more-injured-than-we-knew-in-2018

 

The list:

- ulnar nerve 

- neck stinger

- cracked vertebrae

- plantar fascia tear

- strained oblique

- cracked rib

- sprained AC joint

 

Which all leads to the obvious question that we have debated - does this excuse his poor play or is he too injury prone to be an nfl quarterback?

dudes a warrior mane. I just hope he doesn't go the way of Jake Locker... I wouldn't be mad if we went offense heavy early in the draft. get this offense a dynamic TE AND WR! I know we have needs elsewhere but outside of Mcnair's MVP years and CJ2K's years, this teams' offenses have been middle of the road at best. could you imagine fant/hockenson in the 1st round and one of those receivers in the second? its wishful thinking but lining up those guys with davis, walker, and Humphries to go along with that huge oline and derrick henry could make up a top 10 offense easy I feel. nevertheless, Mariota is a trooper and has had my respect for a long time.

[quiller]

I am all on board with Marcus though yes a quality 2 is a huge but there also needs to be an attempt to have stability and a little better game plan.   The designed runs need to go though I am happy with Marcus having the run option if the D starts ignoring the threat of his run it needs to be done smartly based on D.   He also does need more quality depth at WR so things stay consistent when WR rotate in and out I am not sold on Humphries telll I see him in the field I like Davis Sharpe and Taylor but they need to stay healthy and who knows what walker will bring but we have good depth when healthy here as well   I just want a little better balannce between running Henry and the passing game it seems it’s just too easy for the D to say okay they are running Henry or okay they are passing and if we try to fake them out we can’t execute well enough so the D don’t care and we don’t punish them when they play us for run and we pass or vise versa 

[KingTitan]

Can he stay healthy consistently is the only question, I think.

If injuries weren't a question, he would have been re-signed by now.

I still think he will be re-signed. Just a matter of how much and what the contract will look like.

[Daniel]

1 hour ago, KingTitan said:

Can he stay healthy consistently is the only question, I think.

Is it a question?

It seems to me we have a pretty definitive answer to it already.

[KingTitan]

41 minutes ago, Daniel said:

Is it a question?

It seems to me we have a pretty definitive answer to it already.

Maybe for you, but I seen things turn quickly when it comes to injuries for players.

We've benefited from players like that and we've seen other players around the league who have shaken the injury bug.  
 

 

[dtait93]

So long as he can suit up for the majority of 16 games and can be there to closeout the season when it counts idc about the injury thing. The issue is being productive.

[Daniel]

6 minutes ago, KingTitan said:

Maybe for you, but I seen things turn quickly when it comes to injuries for players.

We've benefited from players like that and we've seen other players around the league who have shaken the injury bug.  
 

 

I don't think there's ever been a player with this extensive and consistent an injury history who turns around and just stays healthy.  I think it's a little silly to think that Mariota won't miss time consistently in the future.  It may be limited, and we may even get a full 16 games out of him if he stays here long term once or twice, but that's it.

[TwoToneBlue]

6 hours ago, Daniel said:

I don't think there's ever been a player with this extensive and consistent an injury history who turns around and just stays healthy.  I think it's a little silly to think that Mariota won't miss time consistently in the future.  It may be limited, and we may even get a full 16 games out of him if he stays here long term once or twice, but that's it.

Brian Orakpo comes to mind. Recurrent pec injuries with Washington and then stayed healthy with us for the most part.

[KingTitan]

2 hours ago, TwoToneBlue said:

Brian Orakpo comes to mind. Recurrent pec injuries with Washington and then stayed healthy with us for the most part.

Kyle Van De Bosch- knee surgery/torn ACL first few years. 

Matthe Stafford started 13 games his first 2 years. Hasn't missed a game since. 

Two that come to my mind. 

[ragevsuall17]

Find this article from a few years ago... It's trying to determine if mobile QBs are more injury prone (they find no correlation)... But I did find this particular stat interesting... "Quarterbacks of both types tend to lose 11 to 14 percent of their starts to injury." Mariota has missed 14.0625% of his starts so far. In years 2 and 3, he missed 6% of his starts. Just did for thought. 

Using online databases and news reports, we put together a list of regular-season games started and starts lost to injury—not suspension or benching—for each team’s primary starting quarterback between 2002 and 2012. This yielded 324 total observations over 11 seasons. We omitted a handful of seasons for which quarterback carousels made it difficult to judge who might have started had all QBs been healthy. We also omitted midseason replacements like Kaepernick, instead choosing one primary starter per team per year. (Based on his play as Alex Smith’s replacement, Kaepernick will go into next season as the 49ers’ starter and be counted that way in the next iteration of this study.) Next, for each quarterback season, we collected data on a set of variables we thought might explain injury rates: rushing and passing numbers, sacks, age, and weight.

... regardless of how we sliced the data, there was no statistically significant difference in injury rates between mobile and conventional quarterbacks. Quarterbacks of both types tend to lose 11 to 14 percent of their starts to injury. Even without counting the thus-far injury-free Kaepernick, three of the four tests produced a lower injury rate for mobile quarterbacks. The gap, though, is small enough that a statistician would call it zero.

... It turns out that the only gameplay variable that explains injuries with any statistical significance is sacks. On average, a 1 percent increase in sack share—the percentage of plays called for the QB that end in a sack—is associated with a 2.6 percent rise in starts missed due to injury (0.7 percent standard error). This link holds when we use the career-wise dataset and when we use sacks per start instead of sack share.

... If a general manager wants to protect a top draft pick, he should shore up the offensive line and cross his fingers.

[ragevsuall17]

Theres also this article https://bleacherreport.com/articles/1407022-ben-roethlisberger-and-5-of-the-most-injury-prone-quarterbacks-in-the-nfl#slide0

Its from 2012 but this is their list... 

1. Jay Cutler 

2. Matthew Stafford

3. Sam Bradford

4. Ben Roethlisberger 

5. Michael Vick

 

Ben is interesting because outside of a few seasons, it seems he misses at least 1 game/year, and often times more than that... And he's still considered a probable hof qb. McNair falls in a similar category. As does Steve Young... 

John Elway was able to stay mostly healthy and be successful in spite missing 6, 2, and 4 starts in 3 of his first 5 seasons. 

Alex Smith is another name that comes to mind... Missed about half of his possible starts in SF (most were due to injury, some were due to Kaep)... Then went to KC and made 15+ starts every year there (95% of possible starts). 

Stafford was able to shake the label all together. 

So it's definitely possible for him to experience success after or even in spite of missing a game or so per year. 

[deeluxx3]

Yeah the quantity of games missed for Marcus really isn't that significant in the grand scheme of things. If his Year 2 injury happened in Week 2, though, he would've missed basically the whole season.

 

He gets banged up, though. If you go through the tape and each game where he's left early due to injury, more often than not it's coming after he's been getting battered throughout the first half and the defense eventually gets their knockout punch. We have to protect him better, which has been a problem for 3/4 of his years here. Can he do more to avoid some of the hits? Absolutely. But we need to protect him better...it's not THAT much of a two-way street between OL protection and QB holding onto the ball too long. Tie in our refusal to implement a short passing game and utilize 3-step drops and it's a recipe for disaster.