Following the suspension of Jalen Milroe, the Vikings were oddly quick to declare Marcus Mariota their starter for their Week 2 game in Atlanta against the Falcons. As you can remember this isn’t Mariota’s first time starting a game in the Mercedes Benz Dome. The 2014 Heisman Trophy winner was the Falcon’s starting quarter back for the majority of the season, until he was benched for the rookie Desmond Ridder. Most of the time in the NFL you see a quarter back get benched and handle it quietly and everything stays in house. Well this was not the case for Mariota. He was benched during the bye week, that same week his daughter was born, so when the announcement was made that he would no longer be the Falcons starting quarter back he was not in the building for some time. It is unclear that Arthur Smith had made him aware of his decision to bench Mariota before the announcement came out, the actions of Mariota in the next coming days spoke louder than Mariota’s words. He chose to have season ending knee surgery to repair a chronic knee issue, and went radio silent, so did the Falcons. Mariota was only on a one year deal at the time, and while the Falcons had not made a statement on whether Mariota would be with the team the next season the writing was on the wall, Marcus Mariota’s time as an Atlanta Falcon had come to an end.
Arthur Smith is still with the Atlanta Falcons, and he has chosen to move on from Desmond Ridder as Trey Lance is now the teams starter. Anyone who has any knowledge on the situation knows Mariota has no issue with Ridder though, the guy he has a problem with is still there, it’sArthur Smith. While Mariota has not said anything positive or negative about Smith, when he was made available to media following the announcement that he would be starting he said, “I want this one bad.” And when the Brandon Staley, the Vikings head coach, was asked if the choice to start Mariota had anything to do with how things ended in Atlanta for Marcus. He gave no comment only a smirk.