Player
Marcus Mariota
QB · WAS Commanders
One-of-a-kind plays are usually trivia; this one is also the perfect Mariota story. His career has been defined by improvising value out of broken situations, and the single most literal example of that in the sport's modern record belongs to him. Nobody else has one. He is a career backup with the only self-thrown touchdown in the book.
Eleven lives
The only touchdown pass a player has ever caught from himself: Mariota, wild card round, January 2018.
RareCompleted TD passes where passer and receiver are the same player, 1999-2025, all games
| Season | Game | Player | The play |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | Wild Card, TEN at KC | Marcus Mariota | Third down pass batted by Darrelle Revis, caught by Mariota, 6-yard TD |
Across every play in this record, more than a quarter century of football including the playoffs, exactly one completed touchdown pass lists the same man as passer and receiver. Down 21-3 at Kansas City, Mariota's third-down throw was swatted at the goal line, came straight back to him, and he ran it in. Tennessee won 22-21. It remains, by the letter of the play-by-play, the only touchdown a quarterback has ever thrown to himself.
Why it matters. One-of-a-kind plays are usually trivia; this one is also the perfect Mariota story. His career has been defined by improvising value out of broken situations, and the single most literal example of that in the sport's modern record belongs to him. Nobody else has one. He is a career backup with the only self-thrown touchdown in the book.
52 starts by 25. Zero at 28. Seven again at 32. The rebuild of a former second overall pick.
TrendGames with 15+ pass attempts, by season
| Season | Team | Games |
|---|---|---|
| 2015-2018 | TEN | 52 |
| 2019 | TEN | 6 |
| 2020 | LV | 1 |
| 2021 | LV | 0 |
| 2022 | ATL | 11 |
| 2023 | PHI | 1 |
| 2024-2025 | WAS | 9 |
The shape of the career in one column: a four-year run as Tennessee's starter, the 2019 benching for Ryan Tannehill, then the wilderness, a single relief appearance across two Vegas seasons. Atlanta gave him one more starting audition; Washington gave him the job that finally fit. By 2025 he had worked his way back to seven games of real work at age 32, the most trusted insurance policy in football rather than a franchise answer. Almost nobody drafted that high gets to write a second act this useful.
Why it matters. Most quarterbacks picked in the top five either become the guy or leave the league; the third path, becoming a genuinely valuable veteran backup, is rarer than it sounds because it requires swallowing the demotion and staying good. Mariota's arc matters for 2026 because Washington's season hinges on Jayden Daniels' health, and the 2025 file shows what the fallback actually looks like.
The 2015 top two, ten years later: Winston threw for 7,000 more yards. Mariota kept the ball.
ComparisonCareer regular season, the 2015 first and second overall picks
| Measure | Jameis Winston | Marcus Mariota |
|---|---|---|
| Games | 105 | 99 |
| Passing yards | 24,792 | 17,879 |
| TD passes | 156 | 107 |
| Interceptions | 113 | 62 |
| INT rate | 3.48% | 2.60% |
| TD:INT ratio | 1.38 | 1.73 |
| Rushing yards | 1,320 | 2,453 |
| Rushing TDs | 13 | 19 |
Winston out-threw him by every volume measure: 7,000 more passing yards, 49 more touchdown passes. Mariota answers with the risk column: an interception on 2.60 percent of attempts against Winston's 3.48, the better touchdown-to-pick ratio, and nearly double the rushing yards. Ten years after they went 1-2, both are backups, and the sharpest lesson of the 2015 draft is that neither profile, the gunslinger or the athlete, became the franchise.
Why it matters. Premium quarterback picks fail more often than any other premium pick, and the 2015 class is the cleanest two-man exhibit: both top picks produced real seasons, neither cleared the franchise bar, and both settled into the veteran-backup economy. For Washington the relevant residue is Mariota's specific survival trait, the low-turnover, mobile profile, which is exactly what a team wants from the man protecting a lead in relief.
The veteran's toolkit
The most downfield-aggressive passer of 2025, minimum 150 throws, was Washington's backup.
AnomalyAverage depth of target, 2025, min 150 charted attempts (regular season)
| QB | Attempts | Avg depth of target |
|---|---|---|
| Marcus Mariota | 225 | 10.2 |
| Matthew Stafford | 594 | 9.31 |
| Drake Maye | 492 | 9.13 |
| Jalen Hurts | 452 | 9.01 |
| Jordan Love | 438 | 8.84 |
Backup quarterbacks are supposed to run the training-wheels version of the offense: screens, checkdowns, get to the sideline. Mariota ran the opposite: his 10.2-yard average target depth led every quarterback in football with 150+ attempts in 2025, ahead of Stafford and the league's premier young arms. A 32-year-old insurance policy pushed the ball deeper than anyone, on a Washington offense that did not dial itself down when Daniels sat.
Why it matters. Average target depth is one of the most personality-revealing stats a quarterback has, and Mariota topping the 2025 list explodes the caretaker-backup assumption. For Washington it means the offense keeps its vertical dimension when the starter is out; for fantasy it means the receivers who live downfield, not the checkdown outlets, hold their value in his starts.
MYTH TEST: the legs go first. His went nowhere: more rushing yards per game in his 30s than his 20s.
Mariota's rushing by age band (regular season)
| Band | Games | Carries | Yards | YPC | Yards/game |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ages 21-29 (2015-2023) | 86 | 357 | 2,064 | 5.78 | 24.0 |
| Ages 30-31 (2024-2025) | 13 | 68 | 389 | 5.72 | 29.9 |
The aging pattern for mobile quarterbacks is brutal and well documented: the arm survives the 30s, the legs do not, with the typical passer keeping only about 70 percent of his younger rushing output. Mariota is running at 125 percent of his own 20s: 29.9 rushing yards a game in his 30s against 24.0 before, at essentially identical yards per carry. The caveats are honest, 13 games is a short sample and the steep part of the decline usually lands mid-30s, but as of today the myth simply has not arrived for him.
Why it matters. A backup's rushing is his eject handle: when the pocket collapses behind a second-string line, the ability to turn a broken play into six yards is what separates a survivable relief stint from a disaster. That the skill is intact at 32, on real 2025 volume, is the single most important fact about what Washington actually has behind Daniels. The law's history still argues this card ages badly eventually; it just has not yet.
5.77 yards a carry for a career: seventh among all quarterbacks with 300 carries since 1999, ahead of Allen and McNabb.
MilestoneCareer yards per carry, QBs with 300+ carries since 1999 (regular season)
| QB | Carries | Rush yards | YPC |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mike Vick | 872 | 6,122 | 7.02 |
| Colin Kaepernick | 375 | 2,300 | 6.13 |
| Lamar Jackson | 1,081 | 6,522 | 6.03 |
| Kyler Murray | 532 | 3,193 | 6.00 |
| Justin Fields | 489 | 2,892 | 5.91 |
| Robert Griffin | 307 | 1,809 | 5.89 |
| Marcus Mariota | 425 | 2,453 | 5.77 |
| Donovan McNabb | 614 | 3,479 | 5.67 |
| Josh Allen | 871 | 4,721 | 5.42 |
The names above him are the running-quarterback canon: Vick, Lamar, Kyler, Kaepernick. Mariota's 5.77 career yards per carry sits seventh on the all-time efficiency list for 300-carry quarterbacks, ahead of McNabb and, notably, ahead of Josh Allen. He never got the designed-run volume of the men at the top, but on a per-carry basis he has always belonged in their company, and 2025's 5.94 average says he still does.
Why it matters. Career yards per carry at quarterback measures pure escape value: what a broken play is worth when this man is holding the ball. Sitting seventh across a quarter century, above two Hall of Fame-track rushers, reframes Mariota's athleticism from a rookie-scouting memory into a documented, still-live career skill.
The 2026 file
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT: if 2026 hands him 100 throws, his average target depth lands above 9 yards. Again.
Mariota's average depth of target by season (100+ charted attempts)
| Season | Attempts | Avg depth of target |
|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 367 | 9.35 |
| 2016 | 448 | 9.70 |
| 2017 | 452 | 8.94 |
| 2018 | 331 | 7.60 |
| 2019 | 158 | 7.13 |
| 2022 | 296 | 10.45 |
| 2025 | 225 | 10.20 |
The call is specific and checkable: if Mariota throws 100 or more passes in 2026, his average depth of target finishes above 9.0 yards. Throw depth is close to a fingerprint, and his reads deep in five of his seven charted seasons, including both of his post-Tennessee stints at 10.2 or deeper. The two shallow years came in the Tannehill-transition offense that benched him; every offense that has trusted him since got the downfield version. Age has not touched the lean, and Washington's scheme rewards it.
Why it matters. For a backup, most forward-looking claims are hostage to playing time, which is why this one conditions on it. The value of knowing the fingerprint in advance is real: in any 2026 Mariota start, downfield receivers keep their roles and their fantasy value, and the offense's identity does not flatten. Seven seasons of evidence, across four franchises and a decade, is about as stable as a quarterback trait gets.
FanIQ answers any NFL stats question with receipts, on your phone.
Get FanIQ freeGet it on Google Play