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TLDR: baby being born and knee surgery.
Isn’t it crazy how no other NFL player ever had an injury and/or baby? I can see why he left the team. /s
To be fair, it’s not all that rare for a backup to have surgery mid-season that they wouldn’t have as a starter. The odd part here is that he was the starter for most of the season and it’s the most important position so having a good backup is important. But the Falcons were essentially out of contention anyway and he was going to be a free agent so he had to start looking to the next season and making sure he was going to get a decent contract after the year is up.
I do think it would’ve been better for the team for him to stick around but I can’t blame him for putting himself first when the team already chose someone else over him.
I can absolutely see saying “you hired me as a bridge until you were comfortable with the young guy, and I did that, but I’m not going to wait on surgery when I don’t even know if you want to play me if the starter goes down”.
Because at the end of the day some teams out of contention would probably still rather play a younger more long term option than the veteran in that spot if the starter goes down.
Knee surgery that wasn’t on his radar, his team’s radar, or his agent’s radar until he was told that the rookie was gonna get a shot to start next game.
Sure, fine, take your elective season-ending surgery, but don’t try to play it like you had to leave, or like the team and coach that covered for you all season long and gave you a wildly-improbably second chance at being a starter when the rest of the league already knew you were broken somehow owed you something. You got paid millions to live every backup’s dream – a shot at becoming the guy – and your coach stuck by you long after you blew that chance.
Then you go and make yourself totally unavailable even to be on the bench for the new kid who got comp’d to you and looks up to you?
I really don’t understand how Mariota got his “he’s a nice guy” reputation, except maybe by contrast to Jameis because they were in the same draft class.
