Marcus Mariota’s tenure with the Atlanta Falcons lasted just one season, but there were cameras rolling for every minute of it.
The former Saint Louis School star and Heisman Trophy winner at Oregon is one of three quarterbacks who will be featured in a Netflix documentary series “Quarterback” that will debut on Wednesday.
The eight-episode series will follow Mariota, Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes and Minnesota’s Kirk Cousins through the 2022 season, which ended with the Chiefs winning the Super Bowl.
Mariota, who began his career playing five seasons with the Tennessee Titans before signing a two-year deal with the Las Vegas Raiders, signed to play for the Falcons in March 2022.
The documentary series, which is the first of its kind in a partnership between Netflix and the NFL, documents the entire season in which Mariota won an open competition with rookie Desmond Ridder and started the first 14 weeks of the season before he was benched in favor of the rookie.
The series will also delve into Mariota’s upbringing and life in Hawaii, which is what appealed the most to him and his family, which now includes his 6-month-old daughter, Makaia, who was born in December.
“I think it will be a great perspective for people who don’t understand Hawaii that don’t understand kind of how the Polynesian culture is and the island life,” Mariota said in a radio interview with KKEA 1420-AM last week. “To be able to share that with the world was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up. All of the interviews, all of the mic’d up scenes, it is what it is, but I think for me just to be able to share my story was pretty cool.”
Mariota said he was mic’d up for every game and for one full day of practice each week. Every so often, the crew would then come to his house and document his family life.
“They became a part of our family really for the last year or so,” Mariota said. “It was definitely different for me.”
Both Mariota’s marketing team and the Falcons had to approve every scene for the series. After the first two or three games of the season, Mariota got a surprising call from one of his marketing agents.
“He was like ‘You know, I think we have to clean up your language a little bit,’ ” Mariota said laughing. “I don’t even think about it in the heat of the moment or while you’re getting ready, so I guess my language is a little foul, so I have to work on that.”
Mariota has since been released by the Falcons and signed a one-year deal in the offseason with the defending NFC champion Philadelphia Eagles.
In an interview with NFL Network, director Tim Rumpff explained the decision to make Mariota one of the three quarterbacks in the series, saying they wanted three players at three different stages of their career.
“You have Patrick, who before this season, had won a Super Bowl, had been to (another), and was trying to get back,” Rumpff said. “You’ve got Kirk, who is trying to prove his place and his career and make that jump to the Super Bowl himself, and then obviously Marcus is with a new team trying to prove that he deserves to be a starting quarterback. … It plays out through the series three guys with three different character arcs.”