Getty Baker Mayfield, Buccaneers QB starter
It would have to be a fairly fickle NFL crowd if, after three straight losses to follow a 3-1 start, the last two by a total of just nine points, folks in Buccaneers country were already calling for the job of quarterback Baker Mayfield, the team’s starter. Just in case that were the situation, Rick Stroud of the Tampa Bay Times says we should rest assured: This is still Baker’s team.
Sure, he still has Kyle Trask behind him, and Trask may yet be the Bucs quarterback. But not yet.
“At 3-4, the Bucs are not out of the NFC South race. On the contrary. The Falcons (4-3) are the only team in the division with a winning record,” Stroud wrote.
“Because of that, the Bucs are not contemplating a change at quarterback. Former Florida standout Kyle Trask may have pushed Mayfield in training camp, but he’s not yet ready to push him to the bench.”
Baker Mayfield Might not Be the Buccaneers’ Starter for Long
Still, Mayfield is on a one-year deal worth $4 million, and he is not a player the Buccaneers are necessarily banking on going forward. It might be nice if he played well enough to earn a more permanent berth with the Bucs, but his time in Tampa was always potentially going to be short-lived, a chance to reboot his career after he was traded by Cleveland and bounced through the Panthers and Rams last year.
When the Bucs were 3-1, Mayfield’s leadership went a long way toward masking some of the team’s bigger problems. But in the last three games, those problems have been too much to cover.
Certainly, the running game has been an issue, and despite some progress, it’s still putting out just 3.2 yards per carry, 30th in the NFL. But the team’s penalties have been an especially discouraging problem, because they can be more easily controlled. The Bucs are whistled for 7.1 penalties per game, 28th in the NFL, and were hit with 11 penalties on Thursday night in the loss to Buffalo.
Mayfield has not been bad (nor has he been great) the past two weeks—QB ratings of 91.1 and 81.0—but there have been too many other mistakes. Coach Todd Bowles said Mayfield is doing his best with what he’s got.
“He’s doing his part,” Bowles said in a press conference this week. “He’s doing everything he can to try and make plays. Sometimes it’s him, sometimes it’s not. It’s an offense as a whole. Like you said, it’s a whole entire offensive thing – it’s not just laid on Baker. It’s not laid on Baker. Everybody has got to execute and everybody has got to do their job.”
Baker Mayfield: ‘It’s a Sh***y Feeling’
Mayfield conceded that he is frustrated. But that’s to be expected, given the way the team has played lately, and there’s no indication he is going to lose his starting Buccaneers job.
Bucs quarterback Baker Mayfield: “Losing three in a row sucks. There’s no way around that. It’s a sh—ty feeling. But we showed fight tonight. That’s the one thing that we can hang our hats on. We gave it everything we had there at the end…”
“You should always be frustrated when you don’t play your best,” Mayfield said after the Buffalo game. “Win or lose. It should be frustrating. For us, it’s got to be the same mentality. Now we’ve just got to put it all together. We have the fight. We have the preparation. I don’t doubt what we do during the week. I don’t doubt what we’re doing scheme-wise.
“Now we’ve just got to execute. It’s just flat-out execution. Being on the same page and doing it. You get sick of that more than anything.”