Titans go all in with Mariota

Marcus Mariota need not bother to look in a mirror to glimpse himself in Nashville, Tenn., this week.

Wherever he goes during the opening of rookie camp — whether it is coming in from the airport on I-40 or heading downtown on I-65 or a lot of routes in between — chances are he’ll see himself in a Tennessee Titans uniform emblazoned on one of the 10 strategically placed 14-foot-by-48-foot digital billboards.

If the message isn’t "Aloha, Y’all" or "The Duck Has Landed" it is "A New Heisman In Our House." And they all read: "Welcome to Nashville, Marcus Mariota."

In the week since the Titans selected the 2014 Heisman Trophy winner with the second pick of the NFL Draft, the team has been running its own high-tempo offense around Mariota in everything from marketing of jerseys and tickets to adapting the X’s and O’s of its playbook.

"We knew that if we were lucky enough to draft Marcus with the No. 2 pick, we were going to put everything we could behind that and take advantage," said Brad McClanahan, Titans director of marketing.

"We started planning, probably, three or four weeks before the draft," McClanahan said. "We said, ‘Hey, if we’re lucky enough to get him, we’re going to crush it after the draft.’ "

McClanahan said the Titans drafted Mariota "at something like 7:23 p.m. (Central time) and, "by about 7:25 p.m. we were getting ready to roll everything out."

In addition to print, radio and TV advertising, the Titans had also begun reshaping their offense to suit Mariota and were giving him some plays to study in advance of rookie camp.

All of it was designed to better prepare him to be the starting quarterback in the much-anticipated Sept. 13 regular-season opener at Tampa Bay against No. 1 pick Jameis Winston and the Buccaneers.

The public response to the Mariota campaign, McClanahan said, was the biggest he’s seen in his 17 years with the franchise. More than 1,000 Mariota jerseys were sold in the first four days, and "we had, by far, our best ticket sale last week."

On Mariota’s way out of town following the introductory May 1 press conference, the Titans gave him some homework.

"We got a nice little to-go package for him that’s got some football stuff in there," coach Ken Whisenhunt said. "That’s the beauty of the iPads, being able to take that with him, and we can update it and send him information and talk."

Whisenhunt said, "When he can get back in here (Monday), we’ll at least have a little bit of a head start on that."

Mariota said, "Right now it’s an opportunity to learn as much as I can. I want to be able to come in and contribute and be the best teammate I can be, and in order to do that, I need to be on top of my stuff."

Titans general manager Ruston Webster told the NFL Network, "Our coaches have been working on a plan for quite some time now for Marcus, really adapting our offense to his skill set."

"We’ve already started working on that," Whisenhunt said. "… I think one of the important things, we talked about this the other day, is you have to push him, you have to challenge him. Obviously there are some things he does well. We’ll incorporate those into what we are doing. It’s going to be a little bit of a blend, but he’s a talented young man and has a very good feel for the position and how to process those things. We are excited to get a chance to work with him."

Webster, who eschewed offers of multi-player trades to grab Mariota, said, "He has a special skill set. There’s really not much he can’t do from a physical standpoint and he’s very bright. That combination is going to allow him to do his own adapting to the NFL game, but our coaches have worked very hard on coming up with a system within our system for Marcus. I think it will work well."

Mariota’s remarkable spatial memory, the ability to remember the position or location of objects and places, has been widely praised.

"Monday Night Football" analyst Jon Gruden said Mariota is well equipped to absorb the material.

"He has an (almost) photographic memory," Gruden said. "He can remember everything you put on a chalkboard over several hours and he can go execute it quickly."

Whisenhunt said, "I think any question that you’re going to be faced when you’re talking about a quarterback is how do they process things. To me, the hardest thing about playing that position is being able to diagnose what a defense is doing, what you have to do to try to counter that and then be able to do that all within a matter of a few seconds and get the ball accurately to the right spot if you’re throwing it."

With Mariota, Whisenhunt said, "The way he processes things and handles things, the way he could talk in a football language that he didn’t have a very good basis in was very impressive. I think one of the things, too, that I really liked, he’s got great spatial memory, and what I mean by that is when you talk about a defense, for instance, if you pulled up a tape from playing USC from two years ago and he’ll go, ‘Yeah, we ran this unbalanced front. They played this defense against it.’ He could tell you where the guys are and, to me, that’s an important part in playing the position."

McClanahan said the Mariota buzz will heighten Monday when rookie camp commences, but it will be all football-driven this time.

"When they come in for rookie camp the (coaches) grab ’em and do what they do," McClanahan said. "We (the marketing side) will let him get immersed in football and learn his playbook."

But, McClanahan said, "Certainly by training camp (in July), we’ll have more lined up. He’s a marketing guy’s dream."