Can Mayfield Turn It Around For The BUCS?
Our Tampa Bay Buccaneers are on a 3-game losing streak and the pitchforks are out.
There are a lot of places we can look for answers and look to point the finger. Everybody has done their part as far as not doing enough to get wins in the past three weeks. Everybody on the Tampa Bay BUCS roster, both sides of the ball, has had their ups and downs. In particular, on the offensive side of the ball.
Unfortunately, there's a sector of fans who will inexplicably single out one player. And oftentimes, it'll be the quarterback. Anything that goes wrong with the team, it's on the quarterback. And that's a bad look.
Maybe even worse is the people who make excuses for said quarterback, whoever it may be. And over the past eight years, going back to 2015 up until now, or even still now, we've had people who have been fans of a quarterback more than they've been a fan of the team.
And so anything that happens with this team, anything that goes wrong, anything that's imperfect other than the quarterback, that group of fans make that the issue more than acknowledging any of the faults the quarterback may have.
I don't know if this goes on with every other fan base, but Tampa, the team that I follow, the team that you follow, it's ridiculous!
Over the past three weeks, Baker Mayfield has been under fire from few groups of fans who feel like he still needs to justify the nod for him to be the starter. The offense, as a whole, has struggled to score points and needs to move the ball constantly. But a lot of that isn't solely on Mayfield. However, he's had issues in the past few weeks on this three-game losing streak. He hasn't played well enough to win in any of them.
And a lot of that's probably not his fault, but it's crazy to say that none of it is his fault.
Baker Mayfield has played relatively well in the three wins. New Orleans was the standout game. He played well enough to keep the team, to keep the offense going. If you had questions about the offense, it wasn't in those three games. If anybody were to tell you Baker Mayfield wasn't a catalyst in the wins, they would be lying to you. His willingness to not give up on plays quickly, as well as his ability to escape the pocket, were big in all three games.
But the harsh reality remains. Baker Mayfield, as a player who is now on his fourth team in three years, isn't in a place where he could have had a three-game skid the way that he's having.
Again, the losses are on the whole team as a collective. Both sides of the ball have had their down moments. Every unit has fallen short of expectations at some point or another. But Mayfield's individual performance needs to be better. A lot better.
And there's one issue in particular that has caused his productivity to slip.
Going back to the Week 4 matchup in New Orleans, Mayfield took a hit from Cameron Jordan and Nathan Shepard, and got rolled up pretty badly early in the game. Mayfield extended the play, and it turned into a touchdown. A clear example of what he's capable of when he's on. He didn't come out of the game. He fought through what looked like a potentially serious injury. He played as well as he's played for the BUCS in that game. He finished that one with 246 yards passing, completing 25 of 32 attempts, with 3 Touchdowns and 1 INT.
He kept plays alive. He scrambled when the offensive line failed him. There's no shame in saying it. It's happened a few times when the offensive line didn't hold up, and he scrambled and made plays. That was the game where people felt like Baker Mayfield was the guy for the BUCS.
Since that game, Baker Mayfield's play has not been the same. I think a lot of that was the injury that was downplayed until this past week when it was revealed that he had a leg contusion.
But I had been saying since that game that he's looked hesitant to leave the pocket, even though the hit he took was in the pocket. Even when he's had wide-open lanes where he could have at least made the threat of a run to make the defense collapse, he's passed on the opportunity. Since the Week 4 win in New Orleans, Mayfield has rushed eight times in three games. He had twenty-three rushes in the first four games.
He has one big scramble came against Atlanta in Week 7 for 31 yards, which is his longest of the season and second-longest of his career.
Mayfield's lack of production when he's unwilling or unable to scramble has been scrutinized. When Baker Mayfield is not utilizing that mobility, it's a fair question: How much more does he offer than 2021 2nd Round Draft Pick Kyle Trask?
Mayfield has played hesitant since that game in New Orleans. And it's not just his running.
He seems hesitant to pull the trigger on a lot of plays. He's made a lot of bad throws and been shaky in the pocket.
The hesitancy from Mayfield is the most problematic. His not being able to see plays develop fast enough or to pull the trigger on passes quick enough is worrisome to me. I've seen this with a previous quarterback in Tampa. That former BUCS QB got to this point, and then he overcompensated his hesitation by forcing passes. And it looked terrible, and it felt awful.
Much like that former BUCS QB, Mayfield's hesitancy has been notable because it's been with a clean pocket. Mayfield has a 65.6% completion rate when working with a clean pocket. Not all of the incompletions are on Mayfield. But there have definitely been more than a few that were. And a couple of those were potentially game-changing. In those clean pockets are where the deep ball opportunities come. And Mayfield has a 28.6 completion percentage on deep ball attempts so far this season. No bueno.
His tendency to be more productive when things go "off-schedule" is a bit unnerving because it's another point often made by the many who backed former BUCS QB and frequent ulcer-inducing turnover machine Jameis Winston. When teams can focus on making the QB play in the pocket, and it takes away his effectiveness, it's a concern. If you dare, go back and look at how many of the interceptions and errant passes from Winston were with a clean pocket. I'm not saying Mayfield is as bad as that guy. But a lot of the early warning signs I had with Winston, I've been seing in Mayfield over the last three games since he's been forced into staying in the pocket more. Mayfield's completion percentage and passer ratings go up significantly higher when he's playing off-schedule. When he's playing loose, he's an undeniable playmaker. But when he's hampered by injury or getting into his own head, he's seemingly easy to key on for the opposition.
When teams say, "Make him beat you from the pocket," it's usually a red flag. It's an insult. That's what we saw a lot from 2015-2019 as BUCS fans. And some fellow BUCS fans didn't get it. It was everything but the quarterback at fault.
"What if he had a running game?"
"What if the offensive line gave him more time??"
"What if the play calling was different???"
"What if the defense didn't allow the other team to move the ball?"
-Running the ball better would be definitely be welcomed. But it won't fix accuracy on passes, reading defenses, or decision-making from the QB position.
-No, the offensive line hasn't been great. But it hasn't been failing as badly as people swear it has. The offensive line has a pass-blocking win rate of 57%. Good for 16th in the NFL.
-With inaccurate passes, indecisive play, and dropped balls, it's extremely difficult to place a lot of fault with the calls when the execution is off.
-The defense has given up a lot of yards. But yards ain't points, and neither is an excuse for bad play on the offense by anyone.
Reiterating: Baker Mayfield is one of many players on the BUCS who needs to play better. He's imperfect. And that's okay. But it's not okay to go on as if he shouldn't be better.
Before the season, I wrote that Baker Mayfield needed to play at a much higher level than Kyle Trask was capable of to be looked at for the starting quarterback position past 2023. Mayfield could not afford to have a three-game skid. It's hard to look at a veteran quarterback who can have this stretch of games and say, "Hey, we definitely wanna roll with that again next season.". The 3-game stretch of pedestrian play hasn't done him any favors in the future-endeavors realm.
I want to see this command in this offense. I wanna see this command in this offense that Todd Bowles and Dave Canales have insisted that he has. It feels like I've only seen a glimpse of that command in New Orleans all those weeks ago.
One fear with Mayfield during this streak of rather mediocre play is that it feels like his play during the first four weeks of the season may have been a mirage. Throughout his career, he's had moments where it seemed like he's got it together and destined to make good on all the hype associated with his name and image coming into the NFL. And then suddenly, it's revealed that moment was just a sucker hole. A gap in the clouds that reveals a hint of bright and warm sunrays which makes you think you can handle the clouds for a bit longer if the promise of sunshine is soon to follow.
He has yet to have a game with multiple interceptions, so he hasn't really cost the team with continuous turnovers. But at the same time, over the last three games, it's been spiraling. He has been getting closer and closer and more often throwing these passes that could be going another way. That's why I'm concerned. It feels like I've seen this before.
I'm on high alert watching this snowball effect. He may be getting more and more comfortable in the wrong way. Barely escaping turnover-worthy throws routinely is a slippery slope. One we've seen is hard to escape once the descent gains the slightest momentum.
Hopefully, the ten days since the Thursday Night loss in Buffalo has given our QB time to rest and heal his injured leg or at least give him a break so he can mentally reset himself. I do feel some of his imperfetions are more mental than physical . I've seen a few fans comment that he's mentally trying not to make mistakes, but in doing so, he's, in fact , making mistakes. So we'll see how it pans out. But going forward, Baker Mayfield has to step up just like the rest of the players on the offense.
That's everybody.
Mike Evans, Chris Godwin, Dave Canales, the offensive line as a whole, they've got to get better if this BUCS team is gonna go forward and make a push to end this season at the top of the division with the playoff appearance as they should. But that offense is gonna have to step up, and a huge part of it is gonna be Baker Mayfield if he's to remain active as the starting QB.
