Marcus Mariota has a lot of things going for him.
He has speed. He has a heck of an arm. He's a smart, talented quarterback who plays for one of the nation's top college football teams at Oregon. On Saturdays, he's 6'4", 219 pounds of pure football brilliance. And, just like Robert Griffin III, Andrew Luck and Cam Newton before him, he's assumed by many outside the league to be the next dual-threat quarterback and overall big thing for the NFL.
The question then, is how do NFL teams actually view him as a player and a person, and further, as the eventual face of a franchise?
Greg A. Bedard of MMQB.com delves deeply into this question in a recent column. Mariota has all the tools, and seemingly, has all the intangibles, but Bedard wonders just how well his skills will translate to the next level.
Mariota "has a bulletproof work ethic and a desire to be great," according to Bedard. What then, has him questioning Mariota's viability as an NFL quarterback?
Apparently, it is his "kind and humble and soft-spoken" demeanor, combined with the Oregon offensive system that Chip Kelly implemented and then left behind for current Ducks head coach Mark Helfrich.
Bedard wonders if Mariota can, "flourish outside the Ducks' quarterback-friendly system? And is he . . . too nice?"
There is always a certain amount of projection teams are forced to do when deciphering the prospects of college students becoming professional athletes. Is Mariota simply an athlete playing the quarterback position? And how will his soft-spoken demeanor play in an NFL huddle, where he will be surrounded by veterans and million dollar athletes with enormous egos and families to feed?
These are the important questions that will no doubt be picked apart piece by piece, both in the media and by teams ahead of next year's draft, as they try to decipher what kind of player Mariota really is, and how well his skills will translate once he finally arrives in the NFL.
Mariota is still favored to be the top pick in next year's NFL draft due to his athleticism, production and prodigious skill, but as evidenced by the fall of players like Teddy Bridgewater, who this year faced similar questions of personality and ability to command, you can never be sure how NFL teams will view the soft-spoken nature of an athlete who plays the sport's most important position.
