Before today’s game Titans tight end Delanie Walker detailed how Marcus Mariota needed to play “backyard football” if the team wanted to beat the Kansas City Chiefs.
“Sometimes you’ve got to play backyard football,” Walker said, via The Tennessean. “Sometimes you’ve got to overcome coaching. And I think that’s what makes some players great, when they know how to do that.”
Sometimes coaching is like, they draw it on the paper, you run a straight line and you break out,” Walker said. “Sometimes you’ve got to overcome coaching. That defender is never going to let you run a straight line, so figure out how to make that line straight without running it straight, you know what I’m saying? That’s overcoming coaching. If Coach tells you it’s a nine-technique, but then in the game you’ve got a six-technique, OK, figure it out and block it. That’s what you’ve got to do.
In the third quarer of today’s Titans-Chiefs playoff game, Mariota heeded Delanie Walker’s advice and made the ultimate “backyard football” play when he caught his own deflected pass for a touchdown.
Marcus Mariota out here catching his own passes for TD's pic.twitter.com/MwYl5ktjtY
— Gifdsports (@gifdsports) January 6, 2018
Marcus Mariota is the first player to catch a touchdown pass from himself since Brad Johnson in Week 7, 1997
— NFL Research (@NFLResearch) January 6, 2018
Marcus Mariota's passer rating when throwing to… Marcus Mariota? pic.twitter.com/LBClE2AYxL
— PFF (@PFF) January 6, 2018
Live replay of that Mariota TD Pass to himself. pic.twitter.com/1Tdwu4wduL
— Jeff Johnson (@JeffJSays) January 6, 2018
When your receivers are dropping your passes then you might as well end up doing it yourself.