Are the Titans going to ruin Marcus Mariota?

Stephen White: Now on to another topic that I feel like hasn’t been discussed nearly enough this week, what did you think of the Titans’ decision to keep Marcus Mariota in the game after the Dolphins edge rusher Oliver Vernon crashed into his lower legs for a roughing the passer flag in the first half of the game? I thought it was stupid when I was flipping through the games live on Sunday, but watching their game on all-22 I was actually appalled that they left him in there. He was limping just to hand the ball off, and he was no longer a threat to run on read option plays which is what I think contributed to one of his interceptions -- the pick-six on the attempted pop pass he tried to throw to his tight end Delanie Walker that was intercepted by Reshad Jones. Oh, and Mariota couldn’t really move around the pocket well after that either, which contributed to the fact that he was sacked four times in the first half by the Dolphins other starting edge rusher, Cameron Wake.

Also known as the guy the Titans refused to chip block on under any circumstances.

FUCKING MISTAKE!!!

Anyway, that team makes my head hurt every time I think about them. I know Russell Wilson has taken his share of hits out there and he continues to go back in the game and keep running, so I’m wondering what is your take on something like this?

Danny Kelly: Russell Wilson has taken some real shots over the years but funnily enough, most of the big hits -- I’d say probably 90 percent of them, anyway -- he’s taken have been when he’s sticking in the pocket and trying to make throws downfield, not when he’s running or scrambling. Guys will get in a shot on Wilson here and there but he’s got an uncanny ability to get down or just avoid taking the brunt of hits, which is a big reason why the Seahawks have continued to allow him (and encourage him) to run with the ball. That said, Thursday night in Santa Clara, Wilson slid after a run and got his foot caught on the soft, mushy turf in the stadium there, and got close to what looked like potential for a bad lower-leg injury. Thankfully he jumped up and ran it off, but that was scary for a split second.

Point is, the way that Wilson protects himself means the Seahawks feel okay about still allowing him to be a runner in their system, and I agree with their stance. Overall, if you’ve got a smart quarterback out there, willing to concede a few yards in order to protect himself long term, I am okay with the idea of running such an important part of your offense like that. However, I do not agree with the Titans’ decision to leave Mariota in in that game last week.

When I was watching that game I just had flashbacks to 2012 when Robert Griffin III exploded his knee on a non-contact drop back, simply because he didn’t have a ton of support in his knee after he’d previously injured it. He had been hobbling around all game (vs. the Seahawks in the first round of the playoffs), favoring it just in the way that Mariota was on Sunday, and eventually it completely gave out, gruesomely. Obviously, he’s not been the same since.

I was so nervous that was going to happen with Mariota too, but was really relieved he made it out of there alive. The first smart move the Titans have made with regards to that is that they’re sitting him this week, thankfully. There is nothing to gain in throwing him and a weakened knee out to the wolves, especially if they don’t have a good plan to protect him.

Stephen: Yeah I definitely had the same visions of RGIII watching Mariota out there last weekend. I’m glad that it didn’t turn out nearly as bad for him as it did for Griffin, but it most certainly could have.

SB Nation presents: The NFL needs to tell us what a catch is IN PLAIN LANGUAGE

Danny: Moving to the schedule this weekend, the slate of games looks really “chalk” to me, in that there are very few matchups where the underdog looks too likely to win. Do you see any of Sunday or Monday’s games as potentials for upset, or is this bound to be a good week for Vegas?

Stephen: As for the games this weekend, I’m actually a little torn about some of them because there don’t seem to be that many truly dominant teams in the NFL this year after all. I mean a couple of weeks ago we thought there were plenty, but a few like the Falcons and Cardinals have faltered a little since then and now look a little more vulnerable than I thought at least.

Take for instance the Rams/Browns game. Are we really sure either team is better than the other? Or will this basically come down to a crap shoot at the end? I’m not really sure. I picked the Rams in our pool, but I certainly didn’t feel very confident about it, especially with the way Browns quarterback Josh McCown has been playing at times the last couple weeks.

I feel pretty much the exactly same way about the Dolphins/Texans game. Looks like Jadeveon Clowney will play this weekend and while he hasn’t gotten any sacks so far, anybody who has actually taken the time to watch the film will tell you that he has been an impact player. Arian Foster has been back a couple weeks now and looks to be knocking the rust off. It doesn’t appear that anybody can stop Nuk Hopkins, no matter who is playing quarterback for the Texans. So I’d think Houston would have a decent chance to win this game even though they will be on the road in Miami.

At the same time, I am not sold on some kind of overnight transformation for the Dolphins after they fired their head coach Joe Philbin and replacing him with apparent “high energy” interim coach Dan Campbell, but the truth is that they did do some things better last weekend against the Titans. Admittedly, the Titans beat themselves to a certain extent, but you still have to give credit to Miami for running the ball more, something they have needed to do all season, and rushing the passer better, which is also an area where they had been sorely lacking. Jarvis Landry is also a grown-ass man, I might add, so this is a team that is also very dangerous.

Miami definitely has enough talent to compete with just about any team in the NFL, especially when their quarterback Ryan Tannehill is playing well, so whose to say they can’t continue the momentum from last weeks’ win and put it on the Texans?

After all the Dolphins are 2-3 and the Texans are 2-4.

I. Just. Don’t. Know.

I haven’t actually checked the Vegas lines, but I think its safe to assume that the Jaguars are underdogs to the Bills this weekend. However, with that game being in London and with Tyrod Taylor as well as several other Bills starters expected to miss the game I wouldn’t be all that surprised if #DUUUUUUUVVVAAAAALLLLLL goes out there and pulls off the upset. It would certainly go a long way toward calming some of the grumbling starting to come from the fanbase about whether their head coach, Gus Bradley, is the right man for the job.

I have to admit watching the film of Jaguars and seeing the myriad of ways they find to beat themselves week after week I do think the fans have legitimate concerns. This is the kind of game where a win really might make people reconsider, even if just for a week. I know the owner says he still backs Bradley, but I don’t think that is unconditional. The Jaguars are going to need to win some games this year for Bradley to keep his job and I think he knows that. One of ‘em might as well be this weekend.

Stephen: Now, I wanted to circle back to something since this conversation extended into Friday which means, of course, that we got to watch Seattle beat the 49ers last night in a Thursday Night game that was damn near unwatchable at times. I know we talked about Seattle a little bit previously in this week’s conversation and some of the issues they have had lately with closing out games, so I wanted to get your perspective as a very close observer of that team on how you felt they played Thursday and also if you were encouraged, discouraged or neither by how the game went for them, especially how they closed it out this time?

Danny: Yeah, that game was pretty ugly, and the Niners didn’t seem to put up too much of a fight in it either. On one hand, the 49ers are a team that almost beat the Giants and then beat the Ravens at home. On the other hand, they’re the worst team in the NFL according to Football Outsiders’ DVOA. Regardless, in a division rivalry game, anything can happen, so the Seahawks did well for themselves in dominating pretty much from start to finish.

Now, they only scored three points in the second half and that’s concerning for Seattle fans once again because of the way they’d completely melted down in the fourth quarter in the two previous games, but after re-watching it and looking at some of the stats, I came away mostly encouraged by how they finished.

First off, the defense did their job and did it well -- and San Francisco had a grand total of three net yards in the entire fourth quarter, taking two sacks and putting a goose-egg up on the board in that crucial frame. So, right off the bat, you have to be happy about that from the defense’s point of view.

However, the Seahawks could only muster three points in that quarter as well, so you start to wonder if there’s something wrong with Seattle’s late-game offense too. As the game went on, there was this feeling that, “oh man, not again,” but looking back, you realize the way the Seahawks’ finished -- by rushing the football a lot and owning time of possession -- is close to what Pete Carroll always preaches in terms of how they want to do it, especially after Russell Wilson’s ugly interception late in the third quarter.

Lost in the boring ending was the fact that Seattle possessed the ball for 11:22 of the 15:00 minutes in the final frame (including the final 3:05, where they took back possession and just choked out the clock). They strung together five first downs in that time after two games where any first down in the fourth quarter was hard to come by (they only had two in the entire second half in Cincy).

So, obviously, punting twice in the fourth quarter while you’re trying to put a team away -- which is what the Seahawks did -- is not ideal. And I don’t think the Seahawks’ offense necessarily turned a corner or broke out or anything like that, but there was more good than bad in there because of the way they owned the clock and easily kept San Francisco at bay. Moving forward, I think the biggest thing for Seattle is to have Russell Wilson avoid those two interceptions, which were really the main reason the Hawks didn’t run away with it completely, in my opinion.