Marcus Mariota, the quarterback Washington keeps handing the job back to

Marcus Mariota

Photo: All-Pro Reels / CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Born	October 30, 1993 Honolulu
Occupation	Footballer
Individual awards	Heisman Trophy · Walter Camp Award

There is a phone call that Marcus Mariota has learned to take calmly. It comes when a franchise quarterback is on the turf holding an elbow or a knee, and a head coach needs someone who will not make the afternoon worse. For most of the last decade the league has treated him as a case closed: the Heisman winner and second overall pick who never became the player Tennessee drafted. Washington keeps reopening the file. Each time Jayden Daniels goes down, the job lands back on Mariota, and each time the question of what exactly he is gets asked again.

He grew up in Honolulu, the son of Toa Mariota, of Samoan descent, and Alana Deppe-Mariota, of German descent. At the Saint Louis School he did not start at quarterback until his senior season, and his parents sold their home overlooking Diamond Head partly to pay for the camps that might get him noticed. That single season as a starter ended with one defeat and the Hawaii Division I state title.

Oregon found him almost by accident. Mark Helfrich, then the Ducks’ offensive coordinator, saw him at a summer camp in 2010, flew to Hawaii to watch him practise and phoned Chip Kelly from the island; the scholarship offer came before Mariota had started a varsity game. Only Oregon and Memphis offered, and Oregon’s place had opened because Johnny Manziel chose Texas A&M. After a redshirt year he became, in 2012, the first freshman to start a season opener for the Ducks in 22 seasons.

The college peak was about as complete as they come. In December 2014 he became the first Oregon player and the first Hawaii-born athlete to win the Heisman Trophy, taking 788 of 891 first-place votes, a day after graduating with a degree in general sciences. He then beat Jameis Winston and Florida State 59–20 in the Rose Bowl semifinal before losing the national championship game to Ohio State. Oregon later put his name on its sports performance center.

The Tennessee Titans made him the second pick of the 2015 draft, right behind Winston, and his first game looked like a prophecy: four touchdown passes in the first half against the Buccaneers and a perfect 158.3 passer rating. In 2017 he took the Titans to their first playoffs since 2008, and in the wild-card round at Kansas City he led a comeback from 21–3 down that included catching his own deflected pass for a touchdown. The body kept interrupting the story. A sprained knee ended his rookie year, a broken fibula cut short the next, an elbow injury and a nerve stinger hit in 2018, the same season Baltimore sacked him 11 times in one afternoon.

The usual account of Nashville puts the blame on Mariota, and the evidence helps it along. In October 2019 he was pulled in the third quarter of a shutout loss at Denver after two interceptions, Ryan Tannehill took over, and the same roster reached the AFC Championship Game. That sequence is hard to argue with. The later reputation, the ideal backup and model teammate, deserves the same scrutiny. When Washington needed him to start for weeks rather than rescue a single afternoon, the team went 2–6 in his eight starts in 2025. The label is a compliment with a ceiling built into it.

The years in between were spent learning a different job. He signed with the Las Vegas Raiders to back up Derek Carr, and his one extended outing, against the Chargers in December 2020, produced 226 passing yards and 88 on the ground. The Atlanta Falcons made him their starter after trading Matt Ryan in 2022; he was named NFC Offensive Player of the Week after beating San Francisco, then benched in December for the rookie Desmond Ridder, placed on injured reserve with a knee problem and released in February 2023. A season as Jalen Hurts’ backup in Philadelphia followed.

Washington signed him in March 2024 and drafted Daniels second overall weeks later, the same slot Mariota had occupied nine years earlier. He briefly wore number 0, the first quarterback in league history to do so, before switching to 18. His relief work that season was precise: a 40–7 win over Carolina after Daniels hurt his ribs, and a comeback at Dallas in the finale that ended with a touchdown pass to Terry McLaurin with two seconds left. He described the mentoring as reliving his own career, steering Daniels around the mistakes he had made himself.

The 2025 season tested that arrangement harder. Daniels played only seven games, missing time with a sprained knee, a hamstring injury and a dislocated left elbow, and was shut down for the final three weeks. Mariota appeared in 11 games, eight of them as the starter, throwing for 1,695 yards with 10 touchdowns and seven interceptions, on a team that finished 5–12.

He re-signed in March 2026 on a one-year deal worth $7 million, rising to $11 million with incentives, choosing the locker room Dan Quinn has built over a move back toward the West Coast. A sprained knee in the first preseason game threatened even the backup role. Then, on September 20, Daniels dislocated his left elbow against Dallas for the second time in 11 months, and a week later Mariota started against the defending champion Seattle Seahawks. He completed 19 of 31 passes for 183 yards and three touchdowns, to Rachaad White, Treylon Burks and McLaurin, without an interception, and sealed the 33–31 win himself with a nine-yard run on third-and-7 with 1:15 left. “We didn’t blink,” he said afterwards.

Away from the field he keeps a small public footprint. Born on October 30, 1993, he is days from turning 33. He married Kiyomi Cook, whom he met at Oregon, on Oahu in July 2021, and their daughter, Makaia, was born in December 2022. He describes himself as a committed Christian, and his younger brother, Matt, also played for the Ducks.

Daniels is listed as week-to-week, and Washington has not placed him on injured reserve, so Mariota is in line to start again while the elbow heals. At 32, in his 12th NFL season, he is still the second quarterback on the depth chart. The weeks that matter most to Washington keep being his.

Tags: sports, athletes, NFL, American football, Jayden Daniels, Tennessee Titans, Washington Commanders, Heisman Trophy, Marcus Mariota

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