The first rule of Marcus Mariota is that he does not talk about himself. He can do many things—roll out and throw across his body, hang in the pocket and zip the ball down the field, run past linebackers when he must—but self-praise is not one of them.

It is a good thing, then, that everyone has a Mariota story.

“Last year, there was a rookie who didn’t have a car,” said Ben Jones, the Titans’ center. “Marcus found out and he’d drive the rookie back and forth. Even after games, we’d land late at night, he’d go 30 minutes out of his way.”

Who was it?

“He didn’t make the team,” Jones said.

Mariota won’t tell you these stories, but everyone else will. Like the time he drove three hours to fix a teammate’s car. How he always makes the bed—even when he’s staying at a hotel. And the way he neatly puts cafeteria items away for other teammates—and guilts them into doing the same.

These are the legends of Marcus Mariota. They are as crucial to his story as anything that happens on the field. There’s an entire locker room that would do anything for him because these moments, stacked upon one another, form the most interesting and effective leadership style in football.

Mariota is on the verge of becoming an NFL star. With the 23-year-old at the helm, the Titans seem primed for a run at a playoff spot—a young team coming off a nine-win season, buoyed by an improved roster and playing in one of the league’s wide-open divisions. Only three players bested Mariota’s 12.4 yards per completion last year, and he was ranked 50th among all NFL players by an NFL Network player poll after his second season.

But when Mariota starts winning big, it will not just be because of his electric athleticism and strong arm, it will be because of stories like this:

“Here’s how he’s amazing,” Titans tackle Taylor Lewan said. “He goes out with the boys even though he doesn’t drink. Most people who don’t drink and then go out with you, they are judgmental fucks. That’s what they are. They look at you and say, ‘Oh really? How many beers is that, Taylor?’ Marcus is not that guy. He’s always ready to be a designated driver.”

During training camps this summer, if I knew someone—on any team—had interacted with Mariota either with the Titans in the NFL or when he was at Oregon, I’d ask for their Mariota story. They always had one.

When former Oregon linebacker Tony Washington, now with the Houston Texans, was driving from Eugene to Los Angeles one spring break, his car was nearly out of gas and then broke down after an oil leak. He called his roommate, wide receiver Josh Huff, and asked for help. Washington told Huff what to buy at Walmart and said he’d reimburse him for the oil and the gas that Huff used to get down to the site of the breakdown. Huff showed up three hours later, but Mariota was driving. “I’m like ‘Jesus,’ because I hadn’t even spoken to Marcus about this,” Washington said.

Marcus handed him the oil then escorted him to a gas station—but refused to take the money.

“I came over to the car window and he’s saying, ‘No, no, no’ and he’s rolling up the window,” Washington said. “I literally had to throw it in the small crack of the window before he rolled it up, that was the only way he would take it.”

I asked Mariota about this episode: “It was a teammate who needed help,” he said.

“Shout-out to Marcus’s parents,” said former Duck and current Kansas City Chief De’Anthony Thomas. “Great job.”

The history of bad scouting reports is long and illustrious.

The entire ESPN draft crew in 1998 couldn’t believe the Arizona Cardinals were willing to give up the chance to draft Ryan Leaf for a package of picks and players. Doug Gottlieb, when he was at ESPN, said that Steph Curry lacked the upside and athleticism of Patty Mills, who’s a sixth man with the Spurs, or Jonny Flynn, who’s currently playing professional basketball in Italy. But it’s hard to find a more ridiculous notion than the one that made its way through NFL circles in the spring of 2015. According to multiple sources, including a coach and executive who spoke with Oregon head coach Mark Helfrich, Mariota’s lack of red flags was ... a red flag.

This was the perfect example of the draft process eating itself. In an age of information overload, the league was gifted a spotless prospect, and by the time the draft world was done with him, he was dirty because he was spotless.

Titans general manager Jon Robinson was a Buccaneers front office lieutenant at the time, and even though his organization drafted a different quarterback that year (Jameis Winston, the 2015 no. 1 overall pick), he knew how silly that logic was.

“I certainly didn’t downgrade him because he’s a good human being,” Robinson said.

Robinson had also heard rumors about Mariota’s soft-spokenness.

“I bristled at him just to see how he’d react to me. They didn’t do a whole lot of huddling at Oregon, so I said, ‘If we draft you and [then-Buccaneers offensive tackle Logan] Mankins misses his block, how are you going to rally him? What if he barks back at you?’ Marcus came back in that calm, calm voice. ‘I’ve done it before. I’ll be able to rally him. Trust me.’”

“Leading by example” is usually code for “never talks and isn’t a leader.” With Mariota, however, it’s real. Mariota rarely yells, but his teammates seem to hang on every word or action.

“I think it comes down to ‘be yourself,’” Mariota said. “Guys will respect that. Guys will gravitate towards that. I don’t want to be something that I’m not. Guys tend to pick up on that quickly.”  

“His leadership is absolutely amazing,” backup Matt Cassel said.

Mariota has a habit, Cassel said, of getting guys to do things. In the middle of this August, Titans players were roaring and ready for a training camp off-day. As soon as their meetings the night before are done, they are gone. “Everyone’s in a rush to get out,” Cassel said. “There’s these folding chairs in the meeting room that weren’t put away. [Mariota] walks in the back of the meeting room and starts folding them up and going and helping somebody who [would have to do it]. There is no other player who is doing this. I’m ready to get out of there, and I see that and I’m like, ‘Oh, OK, I’ll help too.’” Other players followed suit.  

Darnell Arceneaux, Mariota’s high school coach, said there was a tradition at Saint Louis High School in Hawaii in which the lowest quarterback on the depth chart would pick up equipment after practice and carry it to the locker room. That tradition stood until Mariota wouldn’t let anyone else pick up balls and cones at practice.

“So we’ve got this guy who has already committed to Oregon and he’s bringing in as many footballs as he can,” he said. “It was amazing.”

The generosity doesn’t only exist off the field, either. If anyone on the Tennessee offense makes a mistake, Mariota will do whatever he can to claim responsibility.

“He throws you a ball, it gets tipped, and it ends up getting intercepted. He will come back and say, ‘Hey that was my fault.’ And, clearly, it was the receiver’s fault,” said tight end Delanie Walker. “But he takes it upon himself to say, ‘This was my mistake. Let’s fix it.’”

“Deep down he knows [it’s not his fault], and he knows that I know,” said quarterbacks coach Jason Michael. “But what he wants to do is remove all doubt from his teammates. He wants his teammates to know that during film sessions, he has their back.”

In fact, he won’t even go out of his way to correct the coaching staff. At some Titans practices this summer, coaches have accidentally left words out of play calls. This is a perfect time for a quarterback to show the coaching staff up. Michael remembers one instance in which the staff forgot to “tag” the X receiver to indicate where he’d split out on the play. Mariota quietly added the tag in the play call and never mentioned it to the staff.

Because of the example he sets—always picking up after someone else, taking the blame for his teammates’ mistakes—it lends more power to the times he does decide to lay into a teammate.

“I think that’s what shocks people. When you tell people what Marcus is like in the huddle, they don’t believe it,” Walker said. “One time Taylor Lewan—you know, he’s one of these guys who is always downfield hitting somebody. Well, one time we were huddling and Taylor wasn’t in the huddle and Marcus yells, ‘Taylor, get your butt in the huddle!’ and we’re all going, ‘Whoa.’”

Last summer, the Titans held a run-of-the-mill post-practice autograph session for Mariota during training camp.

“I think there were like 700 people who showed up,” Robinson said. This is not usually a problem because, as Robinson put it, “A lot of guys sign for 15 minutes and then it’s ‘I’ve gotta go.’” However, Mariota signed every single item for everyone who came by.

“He stands out there in the hot sun when he doesn’t have to do that and signs autographs for two hours,” Titans coach Mike Mularkey said. “It is not fake. This is the real deal.”

A year later, the Titans’ autograph process has changed. Now, the team selects about 20 fans to go on the field and interact with Mariota. (Super-secret sources tell me if you are a kid and you wear a Mariota jersey, you’ve got a pretty good shot.)

As a native Hawaiian, Mariota’s early brushes with pro football came at the Pro Bowl, where autographs were the main attraction. “I got a bunch—Hines Ward, Jerry Rice, Emmitt Smith,” Mariota said. “When I’m signing, I remember being one of those people waiting in line for a signature, and I just do my best to get through as many people as I can.”

He asks everyone where the signature should go on their ball or jersey; as a former autograph hound, he knows it’s never where you think to sign. And he knows that a few seconds with a star athlete is a good way to get shy kids to open up: “When they come over to you and have the opportunity, you just try to spend a few moments. That’s an easy way to get them talking.”  

Mariota’s interaction with complete strangers is a constant source of amusement—or bemusement—among his teammates. Cassel jokes that you “can’t get through many meals” with the starting quarterback because he never turns away the strangers who approach him.

“We were up in Bandon Dunes [Golf Resort in Oregon], eating at this hole-in-the-wall restaurant. We sit down and the entire place closes in on us. I’m like ‘Oh man, come on,’” said tight end Phillip Supernaw, who just wanted to eat his meal in peace. Mariota, the one the other patrons were after, was not only unbothered, he got to know everyone in the restaurant.

“I think people do a good job at respecting his space, but even if they don’t, he’s so good at dealing with it,” Supernaw said. “He takes the time to learn everyone’s name and act like he—well, not act like. He genuinely cares.”  

Mariota’s attention to detail, of course, also shows up on the field. Michael said that Oregon’s up-tempo spread system prepared him for the professional ranks much more than outsiders may think. After all, the NFL is becoming infamous for its well-worn bias against spread offenses. Mariota, however, entered the NFL with the full ability to analyze film properly, which is not all that common. But there are still small details Mariota has to master.

“When he was at Oregon, they ran the same plays—whether it was first down, third down, red zone, two minute, whatever. They played with the speed and tempo they played with. He never really had to play with clock [constraints],” Michael said.

Two years into his professional career, Mariota is not, in fact, perfect: He has fumbled 19 times in two seasons, ranking in the top five in each of his NFL seasons. Coming from Oregon’s electric offense, his ability to make a big play out of anything can actually be a problem, since he came into the league without much inclination to slide or end a play if nothing is going to come of it. Michael mentions the win last November against Chicago, when Mariota threw the ball away a handful of times to set up field goals as an example of the player’s growth as a well-rounded NFL player.

This is the natural progression of his work habits. “When you show him the film, you’re not bringing up anything because he already did the work,” Michael said. “He wants to talk about Play 14 of the Miami game. ‘How are we going to approach this?’”

Mularkey said that Mariota’s ability to impart his attention to detail on his teammates has been key to the team’s success, as they’ve improved from two wins the year before Mariota arrived to three in his rookie season and then nine in 2016. “He’s not going to embarrass you, but he’ll tell guys, ‘This is the way I want it done, this is the way I expect it to be,’ and guys respect that,” Mularkey said.

At quarterback meetings, Cassel and Mariota sit next to each other at a cramped desk. Unlike his position-mate, Mariota wants everything clean. “Matt’s shit is all over the place,” Michael said. During film time, Cassel will often take his pen and start marking up Mariota’s notepad just to make it less perfect.

“What Marcus does, I guarantee you,” Michael said, “is he goes home, grabs his notebook, and re-writes everything until it’s perfect.”

Kevin Clark