A promising second season for Titans quarterback Marcus Mariota ended with a broken leg and busted postseason dreams. The scar from failing to miss the playoffs lingers, but the leg is close to being healed.
“I feel good,” Mariota said, via Jim Wyatt of the team’s official website. “My body is getting to the point where it is close to 100 percent, and once training camp rolls around, I’ll be good to go.”
How good to go?
“I’ll be ready to go,” Mariota said. “I’ll be 100 percent. This next month or so before camp starts, it is about me getting my body conditioned and ready for camp. For me, I am all green lights and ready to go.”
While Mariota has had limited involvement in each of the team’s 10 OTA sessions (he took only six snaps in team drills), he’s not expected to do more in the mandatory minicamp that ends the postseason program.
“I don’t think so,” Titans coach Mike Mularkey said regarding the possibility of an increased workload for Mariota. “I think, ‘Why now?’ He’ll be ready when we come back for [training] camp, and we’ll have plenty of time in camp. We’ll have a lot of practices. He won’t be on the injury list when he comes back, so I don’t know why [we’d] push it, especially in June.”
Come July, Mariota will be good to go. And the broader question will be whether the Titans will be able to better compete against their rivals in the AFC South, where they lost four of six games in 2016. They went 7-3 against non-AFC South teams.