Four years ago, a veteran NFL quarterback who starred at Saint Louis School played with the Atlanta Falcons for one season, his eighth in the league.<\/p>\n
Marcus Mariota started the 13 games he played in, with the Falcons winning five of them. His individual statistics were unremarkable, other than rushing for a career-high 438 yards.<\/p>\n
Since then, the No. 2 pick of the 2015 draft has gone into the last three seasons as a backup to quarterbacks with similar skill sets (as a dual threat QB), first a year with the Philadelphia Eagles behind Jalen Hurts, and the last two with the Washington Commanders and Jayden Daniels. Because of injuries to Daniels, Mariota started eight of the 11 games he played in last fall, with the Commanders losing six of them.<\/p>\n
Mariota was the subject of one of the lower-profile NFL news reports from a busy Monday. He will remain in Washington as Daniels\u2019 backup and mentor on a one-year deal worth at least $7 million, according to the reports.<\/p>\n
Splashier news from Monday involved another former Crusader top-five draft pick, with Tua Tagovailoa apparently landing in Atlanta. (We say \u201capparently\u201d because today is the first official day of the free agency signing period, with Monday getting the paradoxical descriptor of the first day of \u201clegal tampering.\u201d)<\/p>\n
Tagovailoa just turned 28, the same age Mariota was when he arrived in Atlanta. <\/p>\n
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Most of the similarities end there, except for one big one, especially for Falcons fans.<\/p>\n
When Mariota arrived for the 2022 season, it was as a bridge quarterback replacing Matt Ryan, who was traded. Mariota was seen as a veteran who could do a good job until the next Ryan \u2014 a former MVP who led the team to a Super Bowl in 14 years in Atlanta \u2014 comes along.<\/p>\n
Four years and four more starting QBs later, and the bridge is still under construction. The Falcons\u2019 slump of not making the playoffs since 2017 continues.<\/p>\n
For Tagovailoa, this is about as good a situation as he could have hoped for. While the jury is still out on Michael Penix Jr. as he comes back from a torn ACL, the much more experienced Tagovailoa might get a chance to start at least a few games early on. The offense features explosive playmakers, starting with running back Bijan Robinson and receiver Drake London. They fit Tua\u2019s strength in delivering the ball quickly and accurately.<\/p>\n
It also makes sense for the Falcons, because they get an experienced quarterback for a good price. As crazy as it might seem, $1.3 million for a year is a bargain basement price. Tagovailoa\u2019s former team, the Miami Dolphins, is stuck with paying him around $50 million because of the four-year, $212.4 million extension signed in 2024, which included $167 million in guarantees.<\/p>\n
That was when Tua was coming off a strong season, making the Pro Bowl after leading the league in passing yards while the Dolphins went 11-6. But things have not gone well in Miami since. There were \u2014 and still are \u2014 big question marks, including about his durability, largely due to several concussions and other injuries.<\/p>\n
Back to potential positives, there\u2019s another thing that some analysts say makes Tagovailoa a nice fit for the Falcons: He throws with his left arm, and so does Penix.<\/p>\n
While around 30% of professional athletes are left-handed, only three current NFL quarterbacks are, which computes to about half of the U.S. general population\u2019s 10%-13%. Yes that\u2019s a small sample size, but a little more research indicates that\u2019s no statistical anomaly. According to an ESPN report, there were 721 men who played at least one game at quarterback from the start of the Super Bowl era in 1966 to the time of the report, in 2021. Wikipedia lists 31 lefties who played in that span, so that would mean less than 5% of all NFL modern-day quarterbacks have been lefties.<\/p>\n
The most notable? They would be Steve Young, Kenny Stabler, Boomer Esiason and Michael Vick.<\/p>\n
As of now, there are just three southpaw NFL quarterbacks \u2014 Mililani High alum Dillon Gabriel of the Cleveland Browns and the two Falcons. By the way, the two quarterbacks in the last Hawaii Bowl \u2014 Cal\u2019s Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele and Hawaii\u2019s Micah Alejado \u2014 are from Hawaii, and are both lefty throwers.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s nothing about Hawaii\u2019s general population to indicate that this is anything more than coincidence. Available research is sparse, but results from a study in the 1980s showed that the states with a higher percentage of lefties were in New England (Massachusetts, Vermont and Maine).<\/p>\n
If Tagovailoa and Penix end up \u2014 as expected, if healthy \u2014 as Atlanta\u2019s primary quarterbacks, it makes things easier for the Falcons offense, in the sense that they won\u2019t need to change things like blindside protection based on which of them is behind center. It\u2019s better for receivers, too, because presumably the rotation of passes from two lefties will be similar.<\/p>\n
At least one analyst considers this aspect overblown, noting a much more important factor, that one about the best ability being availability.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t want another quarterback who health, injury and safety is a concern,\u201d ESPN\u2019s Ryan Clark said Monday. \u201cI know we keep talking about having two left-handed quarterbacks. Man, I don\u2019t care if they throw the ball with their forehead. You need them to be healthy.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Four years ago, a veteran NFL quarterback who starred at Saint Louis School played with the Atlanta Falcons…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":806281,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2074],"tags":[223,254,2554,35159,224,7,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-806280","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-atlanta-falcons","8":"tag-atlanta","9":"tag-atlanta-falcons","10":"tag-atlantafalcons","11":"tag-editors","12":"tag-falcons","13":"tag-football","14":"tag-nfl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116210310054212159","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=806280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806280\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/806281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=806280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=806280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=806280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}