The Facts: For about a month early in the offseason, and then again in July, Mariota spent time with San Diego-based strength and conditioning coach Ryan Flaherty. Their mission: Work to make the Titans' second-year quarterback less susceptible to injury. "A big part of injury prevention is you've got to be able to get to the smaller stabilizer muscles, and we really focused on building those up," said Flaherty, who has worked with quarterbacks Carson Palmer, Russell Wilson and others. "At this level you take more hits, more contact to the lower body, knees, and we really focused on stabilizing the knee joints and working on his hips."

Diehards Line: Mariota had a fine rookie year but played in only 12 games as two separate knee injuries knocked him out of action. Bad luck and bad timing can make some injuries unavoidable. But Flaherty said Mariota worked hard to improve muscle groups that are important for stabilizing knees that might take lateral hits: hips, gluteus medius (the muscle that’s on the outside of both sides of the pelvis) and VMOs (vastus medialis obliques), the teardrop muscles above the kneecap. Flaherty said he texted Mariota after he suffered his first knee sprain -- Oct. 18 against Miami on an illegal hit from Olivier Vernon -- and said he’d seen less torque and twisting result in a torn ACL. “He would send me text messages throughout the year,” Mariota said. “'Make sure you’re working on your VMOs, make sure you’re building your body up the right way.’ When I got to him this offseason we talked about how the injuries happened. I was a little lucky, for sure.” Perhaps some of their work helped lessen the impact. Perhaps in the future, additional work will do the same or more.