It is Marcus Mariota’s birthday today. And while many will likely be beginning their Halloween festivities tonight, Mariota plans to go out to dinner with his parents.
With just a couple of days away from the highly anticipated matchup between No. 5 Oregon and Stanford, Mariota had some time at practice to give his thoughts on the upcoming game.
So are you planning to tear Eugene down on your birthday? 
(Laughs) No, my family is actually driving down from Portland right now, so I’ll probably have dinner with them and kind of relax.
I’m just going to get this out of the way. There was speculation yesterday that an NFL scout accused you of being too nice. Are you too nice to be successful in the NFL? 
That’s up to other people. Eventually we’ll see, but for me, I just focus on what I have to do.
Do you consider yourself a nice guy? Do you have mean moments? 
I don’t know, what do you guys think? I don’t know, it’s just other people’s opinion.
Last year you guys got shut out in three quarters. This year, how do you flip that script and get points on the board? 
Making the most of every drive. We’re gonna get little possessions with how Stanford’s offense really holds the ball, so we just got to make sure to execute and score when we’re in the red zone.
Is its defense (Stanford) different this year, compared to year’s past when you’ve played them? 
A little bit. They’re still physical up front. They’ve still got guys in the back making plays. They’re a very solid defense and not much has changed. Again, we just got to focus on what we have to and execute to the best of our abilities.
How key is it this week that your offensive line gets you time to operate against this defense?
They (offensive line) understands they’ve got to be physical up front. If we’re able to control the line of scrimmage, it will really help us execute our game plan.
Are you motivated at all that the playoff committee left the Ducks out?
Right now, it’s what week 10? It really doesn’t have a say into what we have here. Right now, it’s not even December yet and the playoff committee will continue to put out their rankings, but for us, we can’t control that. We’ve just got to focus on what we have and make sure we take it one day at a time.
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