Should Mariota have been first overall pick?

Should Mariota have been first overall pick?

Tampa Bay Buccaneers fans might be wishing for a draft do-over after watching No. 2 overall pick Marcus Mariota thrash the Bucs on the way to a 42-14 win for the Titans.

The Jameis Winston-Marcus Mariota comparison will go on for years. It won’t be determined by what happened in the first game of each of their careers.

But the first round should be scored 10-8 for Mariota. Maybe even 10-7.

In a blowout 42-14 win over Winston’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Mariota had a 158.3 quarterback rating. That’s a perfect rating. He completed 13 of 16 passes for 204 yards and four touchdowns, and the Tennessee Titans were up so big in the fourth quarter that Mariota sat out most of it. Mariota is the third rookie quarterback to ever post a 158.3 rating, joining Robert Griffin III and Drew Bledsoe. Mariota is the only rookie to do so in his first game.

It’s early, there’s a long way to go, but if it turns out that the Buccaneers made a terrible mistake at the top of the 2015 draft, we’ll say we could see it from the first game on. Winston looked awful from his first throw, which was a pick-six. He was the first quarterback since Brett Favre in 1991 to have his first NFL pass be a pick-six (and look how Favre turned out, Bucs fans!).

He looked like a typical rookie playing on a bad team with a coach in Lovie Smith who looks like he should have been fired after last season. Winston was 16-of-33 for 210 yards, two touchdowns and two interceptions, and had his stats padded with some garbage-time production.

 

 

If you didn’t know better, you’d never have guessed this was Mariota’s first game.

Mariota was supposed to be the quarterback who had trouble adjusting to the NFL after running a spread offense at Oregon. Maybe it’ll turn out that Tampa Bay’s defense is just that bad (really, this is a good possibility), but Mariota looked like a long-time veteran. He looked great in the preseason too, but that’s not always the best gauge of anything. But the athleticism, accuracy and decision-making he showed in the preseason transitioned seamlessly into the regular-season opener. It was arguably the best debut a rookie quarterback has ever had in the NFL.

This doesn’t mean the race is over. WInston could very well turn out to be a better pro than Mariota, just like the Buccaneers thought he’d be when they took him first overall. But be honest: With Sunday’s game fresh in our minds, it would be very hard to predict that.


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