Tennessee Titans rookie quarterback Marcus Mariota had a monster game in Week 9, but it came against the New Orleans Saints, who have let innumerate quarterbacks put up numbers on them. So Sunday's game, in which Mariota was the driving force behind the Titans' big 42-39 win over the Jacksonville Jaguars, could be described as Mariota's real coming-out party.
Fantasy football waiver wire advice: Marcus Mariota torches the Jaguars
The rookie quarterback was unstoppable Sunday. We break down the fantasy implications.
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Mariota passed the ball only 29 times Sunday -- the third-lowest game total of his career -- completing 20 of them for 268 yards, three touchdowns and one interception, adding 112 rushing yards and a touchdown on nine carries. It was the fourth game of Mariota’s rookie season with three or more passing touchdowns and his second in a row.
Fantasy impact: The interception can scarcely be blamed on Mariota, as it was a fine pass that bounced off of Dorial Green-Beckham into the arms of the defender. And, while 87 of Mariota's 112 rushing yards (nearly doubling the 137 he came into the week with) came on a single run, we all knew coming into the season that Mariota had the legs to be a productive quarterback on the ground.
The flip side is that Mariota is certainly not a matchup-proof quarterback. His two biggest games have come against New Orleans and Jacksonville, two of the league's three worst teams against opposing quarterbacks, and he's averaged only 12.4 fantasy points a game this season outside of those two games. Mariota is owned in 44 percent of Yahoo! leagues, and his upside makes him worth owning in even more than that, but he's hardly exciting with games against the Jets and Patriots the next two weeks.
