It's not often a quarterback completes 19 straight passes to open a game and still loses. But that's exactly the kind of unusual night Marcus Mariota had in Monday's 34-17 loss to the Houston Texans.
Mariota completed 22 of 23 passes for 303 yards and two touchdowns. He also completed 19 straight passes before throwing an incompletion on the Titans' final possession with just over a minute to go.
"Stats are stats," Titans coach Mike Vrabel said after the game when asked of Mariota's string of completions. "The loss is really what I'm going to try to focus on. We got to stop the run. We can't have second-and-25 and third-and-20. There's a lot of other things other than individual stats that we're trying to focus on."
Vrabel had good reason to not be too smitten by Mariota's statistical achievement. Tennessee gave up six sacks on Mariota and the Titans only mustered three scoring drives. In addition, of those 19 straight completions, only three went beyond 10 yards in the air.
"I can do a better job, though," Mariota said after the game. "I didn't help our guys up front -- I was holding the ball too long. I got us in negative situations, taking some of these sacks. I'll look back at the film and get better from it, and improve."
Still, Mariota's performance was steady and encouraging considering he was dealing with a neck stinger at the beginning of the week that was initially threatening his participation in the game. While the completion streak was impressive, the Titans (5-6) will need to link up multiple wins to have any shot at a playoff berth.
