Mike Mularkey, Healthy Mariota Give Titans Hope After Impressive Win

The Tennessee Titans were awful under former head coach Ken Whisenhunt, who was relieved of his duties Tuesday after winning only three games during his tenure. Of those wins, two came when he had eight months to prepare.

There was also a gag-reflex-inducing odor coming from the Titans when quarterback Marcus Mariota missed two games because of a knee injury. They scored just 13 points without Mariota, a stretch of utter futility that included only one offensive touchdown while the Titans lost their fifth and sixth straight games. Rock bottom came in Week 8 when they averaged 3.6 yards per offensive play during a loss to the Houston Texans.

And yet suddenly there’s a scenario where they could erase that spiraling nosedive after Mariota returned and led his team to an overtime win against the New Orleans Saints. The Titans' hopelessness could quickly become a distant memory because of a painful reality in the AFC South this season.

The division resembles The Simpsons' Springfield tire fire, which means even competent quarterback play keeps playoff aspirations alive.

The Titans' play resulted in an ending far above that minimum standard Sunday during Mike Mularkey’s debut as interim head coach. Mariota performed on par with his draft price, complete with a touchdown pass to force overtime and another to win it.

He threw four touchdown passes during the 34-28 victory. As ESPN Stats & Info noted, Mariota's habit of scoring in bunches has already put him in historic company:

Overall, he’s now thrown 13 TDs, which gives him one more than Vince Young's former franchise rookie record of 12. In 2006 Young needed 13 starts and 357 pass attempts to reach that plateau. Mariota? He’s done it in six starts and 200 attempts.

Sunday also marked the second game in which Mariota has thrown four-plus touchdown passes. The most important one—a five-yard overtime lob to tight end Anthony Fasano—showed how critical the rookie passer is to everything Tennessee wants to accomplish offensively.

Mariota’s athleticism leads to opportunities for creativity. The overtime winner utilized both his wheels and arm strength with a designed rollout to the right, followed by a long cross-field toss.

Fasano sold himself as a blocker on Mariota’s rollout. Then when Saints defenders flowed to the right, he was left neglected. There wasn’t a black and gold jersey within five yards. The NFL highlighted Mariota's "game-clinching throw":

Prior to that game-clinching throw, Mariota had run for only five yards. But it didn’t matter, as the mere threat of being burned by his speed draws attention, and it always will.

Mariota also threw for 350-plus yards for the second time in a game, and he did it while averaging 9.5 yards per attempt. Yes, both of those numbers were helped along by a gracious gift from the Saints defense when two defenders collided, and the ball ricocheted into tight end Delanie Walker’s hands. Walker then laughed heartily while turning a potentially disastrous throw and sure interception into a 61-yard touchdown.

But Mariota’s brilliance while completing 71.8 percent of his attempts wasn’t a fluke. Even if we subtract Walker’s bouncing-pinball touchdown from the former Oregon standout's 371 yards, that’s still only one long completion among many.

The 22-year-old finished with eight 20-plus-yard connections. They were a product of both deep accuracy and hitting receivers in stride on short timing routes, allowing them to gain yards after the catch.

Combine all of that—Mariota’s touchdowns, his accuracy and his care with the football while recording his third interception-free game—and you get another slice of history, again via ESPN Stats & Info:

The Titans averaged only nine points per game over the final four weeks of Whisenhunt’s dance with repeated failure. In one game under Mularkey, they scored 34 points, with 14 coming in the fourth quarter and overtime.

It’s one game, and as we’re seeing right now with the Miami Dolphins, the interim head coach honeymoon can zoom by at warp speed. That is a problem for any coach except Mularkey and any team under an interim head coach except the Titans.

This isn't a team that needs sustained excellence to push for the playoffs. That sounds downright bizarre when we’re talking about a bottom-dwelling Titans group. After Mularkey stops "shaking" from the adrenaline rushing through his body, he’ll look up and still see a 2-6 record.

That, sadly, isn’t a death sentence in the AFC South, where every team still sits with a sub-.500 record after Week 9. The four teams in that dirt-filled division long ago stopped caring about their collective mediocrity, and they're instead focusing on this question: How can we be just good enough to make the playoffs?

The Titans still have four division games left, and they’re riding both a temporary wave from the naming of a new head coach and (hopefully) a long-term one as their young quarterback grows.

So the answer for them is simple: Keep Mariota healthy and in one working piece.