The Tennessee Titans are a bad football team with a promising young quarterback in Marcus Mariota, but maybe if all their games this season would have been away from home, things would have been different.
The Titans have just two wins to their name heading into their Thursday Night Football game against the Jaguars, both of them when playing on the road. The first came in week 1, Mariota’s first NFL game, beating the Tampa Bay Buccaneers thanks to Mariota efficiency and the Bucs’ overall suckiness 42-14. The second one came nearly two months later in New Orleans, beating the Saints, with their record breaking bad defense 34-28.
Mariota was great in both wins and has been looking sharp in all three road games this season. On the road he still hasn’t thrown an interception (even in the loss to the Cleveland Browns) against 10 touchdown passes. He completed 67.4% of his passes for a 132.4 passer rating, averaging 11.27 adjusted yards gained per attempt. When playing at home (four games, all losses) Mariota is still completing nicely (63.9%) but has just three touchdown passes to six interceptions, a passer rating of 74.1 and 5.62 on the adjusted yards meter.
In what has become the battle to avoid the bottom of the AFC South in most of the last few years, the Titans might even be considered favorites against a Jaguars team trying to get a rare winning streak going. Regardless of who wins, both teams are a long way from being competitive again, although Mariota might once again show us how easy it is for him when he doesn’t have home fans cheering his name.