Andy Reid convinced Titans to keep pick, take Marcus Mariota

Andy Reid played a small role in getting the Titans to keep the No. 2 pick in Thursday’s NFL draft to draft Marcus Mariota.

Next: 15 biggest busts in NFL Draft history

Collusion! The whole thing stinks, it stinks to holy heaven! That’s right, Andy Reid, head coach of the Kansas City Chiefs played an integral role in keeping Marcus Mariota on line to be the No. 2 pick, and here’s the key line, by the Tennessee Titans.

Okay, okay, it’s not as bad as it sounds. Reid wasn’t trying to poke the old dragon–his former franchise the Philadelphia Eagles. He wasn’t even trying to convince the team it should take Marcus Mariota with the No. 2 overall pick.

He merely shared his experiences and the philosophical renderings which resulted when he spoke on Thursday prior to the draft with Titans head coach Ken Whisenhunt.

“I was talking with Andy today,” Whisenhunt told Monday Morning Quarterback’s Peter King after the draft ended Thursday night, “He told me the story about Ditka offering a whole draft for (Reid’s) pick. I understood what he was saying. It certainly helped solidify what I was thinking–that’s for sure.”

What Whisenhunt was thinking went against the rhetoric many were trying to push over the past few months–that Mariota is a system quarterback, or incapable of running a pro-style offense, especially the sort Whisenhunt prefers with almost exclusive looks of dropback passes from under center.

Whisenhunt is stubborn, no doubt–despite being an engineering major in college, he still thinks analytics have no part in the game of football–but he’s not dumb.

And he can recognize a good football player when he sees one. He also recognizes something that was probably underrated by the analysts over the pre-draft period, Marcus Mariota is also very smart, very heady and a noted gym and film rat.

Mariota may not be the “prototypical dropback quarterback” right now, but give him a few months, or more fairly even a year or two, and who is to say he cannot become another version of Andrew Luck?

That’s the kind of quarterback Andy Reid developed in Philadelphia when he turned down Ditka’s ridiculous offer for the No. 2 pick (who he eventually got with a still ridiculous trade with the Washington Redskins) to draft Donovan McNabb.

McNabb at times struggled with accuracy and had his flaws. But with Reid and McNabb the Eagles were an annual contender. Those kinds of quarterbacks don’t grow on trees. And that is essentially the lesson Reid was trying purvey to Whisenhunt.

Or at the least, and more importantly, it is the lesson Whisenhunt took from their conversation.

The only question that remains is, Is Mariota actually that kind of quarterback? The Titans are convinced that he is indeed.

Next: Top 15 NFL careers for former Heisman winners

More from NFL Draft

Home/NFL Draft