Marcus Mariota enters his fourth NFL season under his third head coach, coming off his worst year in terms of individual performance. Mariota’s passer rating, yards per attempt, and touchdown rate all plummeted, while his interceptions jumped from nine to 15. He passed for fewer than 200 yards in five of his last seven regular season games. Not good.

But the Exotic Smashmouth era is now behind us. Mike Mularkey was jettisoned as Tennessee’s head coach just 36 hours after his team was eviscerated by New England in the divisional round of the playoffs last January. The team hired Mike Vrabel to replace Mularkey, then poached offensive coordinator Matt LaFleur from the Rams.

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LaFleur, 38, has worked with some of the league’s most inventive play-callers in recent years, including Kyle Shanahan and Sean McVay. He served as Atlanta’s quarterbacks coach in 2016, Matt Ryan’s MVP season, and as the Rams’ OC in 2017, when Jared Goff made the Pro Bowl. The last two QBs coached by LaFleur have led the NFL in yards per completion (Ryan at 13.3, Goff at 12.9); the last two offenses he’s coached have led the league in scoring.

It’s almost a given that Mariota will deliver a bounce-back season, considering the things he’s already accomplished for the Titans. He’s just a year removed from a season in which he threw 26 TD passes and only nine interceptions, averaging 7.6 yards per attempt. Mariota’s rushing ability is well established, if underutilized. He’s averaged 5.9 YPC for his career, but only 3.7 rush attempts per game.

“We’re going to try to tailor our offense to our guys’ abilities,” says LaFleur.

That’s been an unfamiliar concept in recent seasons in Tennessee, but it just might work. LaFleur has emphasized the need to create explosive plays and his history suggests it’s more than lip service. This feels like a particularly meaningful coaching change for fantasy purposes.

View photos Let’s all just try to forget about Marcus Mariota’s less-than-stellar 2017 and focus on the future. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa) More

Mariota generally slips outside the first ten rounds in drafts (ADP 129.7), so he’s a low-cost player with a sneaky-high ceiling. Let’s remember that he’s still only 24 years old. Mariota finished as the No. 12 fantasy QB in 2016, and it’s not outrageous to forecast a return to that level. Thousands of managers are a hard “no” on Mariota this year after being burned last season, which means his price should remain low. If you’re committed to a late-round-quarterback draft plan, Mariota is a recommended option.

Corey Davis is a clear breakout candidate

Davis entered his first NFL training camp with high expectations and a relatively unobstructed path to targets, but things quickly veered off-script. He missed basically all of camp and the preseason with a hamstring injury — not an ideal situation for any player, especially a rookie. He was able to return for opening week at something less than 100 percent, and he actually led the team in targets (10). But Davis aggravated the hamstring injury in Week 2 and he was sidelined until November. All things considered, it was a brutal way to open a career.

Late in the season, however, Davis had his moments. He caught six balls for 91 yards against the Rams in Week 16, then scored both of Tennessee’s touchdowns in the playoff loss to the Patriots. Davis was a massively productive collegiate receiver who topped 1400 yards in his final three seasons, and he entered the 2017 draft as the consensus top player at his position. He’s a guy with clear strengths and few obvious weaknesses. If his draft price holds in the Crabtree-Funchess-Sanders range (ADP 77.4), I’ll own him everywhere. We can assume that a healthy share of Eric Decker’s old targets (83) will be redistributed to Davis.

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