Baker Mayfield Takes Care Of The Ball
November 16th, 2023
Protecting the ball.
Joe swears the way some NFL coaches carry on about turnovers and takeaways, they believe taking care of the ball is more important than scoring.
Let’s not beat around the bush here: For a defensive-minded coach, nothing is more important than winning the turnover battle. Taking care of the ball is a very close second.
(Third might be points.)
And yes, Bucs coach Todd Bowles is a defensive coach.
So in that respect, Baker Mayfield is winning despite the Bucs having a 4-5 record. In a project ESPN undertook to break down how each team’s offense has fared through Week 10 Jenna Laine notes the Bucs are not turning the ball over.
And a big reason is Mayfield.
…The Bucs have turned the ball over just eight times, tied for second fewest in the league. Quarterback Baker Mayfield, whose 64 career interceptions heading into this season were the most in the league since he was drafted No. 1 overall in 2018, has thrown just five picks.
How good is that? Well, when Tom Brady first came to the Bucs, do you remember anyone hollering about his picks? Through his first nine games in Tapa, Brady had seven picks.
So in that respect Mayfield has started off his Bucs days better than Brady. Bowles has to be giddy about this.
Now if the offense can only embrace the grim reality they cannot run the ball and find ways to feed Mike Evans and Chris Godwin more.
November 16th, 2023 at 12:10 am
Turnovers are way overrated.
Points are what matter – in fact, it’s literally in the rules – you win by scoring more points than the other team, not by winning the T/O column. Not a joke.
With that said, Baker has done a really good job of what Todd Bowles thinks is the most important thing in football. The issue is that Todd Bowles thinks it’s 1970 still, and you win by running the ball and playing good run defense – when the NFL has been a passing league for 30+ years now.
November 16th, 2023 at 2:40 am
How has he taken care of the ball ? He threw only 4 TD’s in the three losses at home with 3 picks. How can he throws more picks when he only manages the offense without explosive plays to avoid picks ? That is one of the reasons we have a losing record.
November 16th, 2023 at 6:21 am
Your last paragraph says it all. I can see him as a Buc if we get RB and the big receivers get the ball more. White can’t run unless he’s moving after a pass. That would let us go into the playoffs and win a game or two
November 16th, 2023 at 6:24 am
Rod… turnovers are overrated? If that was true there wouldn’t be truckloads of stats proving otherwise. Winston would be a starter in the NFL, the Bucs would have gone 11-5 in 2019 and not 7-9 behind Winston’s 30 INTs. Turnovers are absolutely not overrated. Sure. Points mean a lot but you will need a lot of points if you turn the ball over frequently. That’s an absolute fact. Behind HAVING MORE POINTS AT END OF GAME, turnovers are the most important statistic to win as far as predicting success.
November 16th, 2023 at 6:36 am
Zzzzz.
November 16th, 2023 at 7:05 am
Turnovers…wasn’t that the common theme in training camp regarding Mayfield v. Trask? The winner of the QB1 job would be the guy that turned the ball over the least. We have a winner! Ding ding!
November 16th, 2023 at 7:19 am
They didn’t lose Atlanta or Houston because of TOs. They lost because of bad Defense. 4-5 becomes 6-3 if Bowles’ Defense was not so bad.
November 16th, 2023 at 7:47 am
David … ‘How can he throw more picks when he only manages the offense without explosive plays to avoid picks?’
I’m confident that you’re onto something there David, I’m just not sure where it leads. We obviously have precious few explosive plays in our run game (the giveaway was the Bucs ranking #31 in Rushing Yardage?). We rank middle-of-the-pack (#15) in Passing Yardage, which is actually quite good considering that we rank #23 in Passing Attempts & #22 in Pass Completions (we’re doing above average IOW in Yards per Completion?).
Without doing a deep dive on each game, I’d assume that our Passing Yards per Attempt is better-than-average, and in fact we rank #13 in that category with 6.4 YPA. That’d lead me to believe that we should be passing the ball MORE (since our average gain per pass play is 6.4 yards and our average gain per run play is the league’s lowest 3.1 yards average gain per play?). Strange thing is though, in our 4 wins we actually ran MORE than we did in our losses. Hmmm, maybe it had something to do with the quality of the opposing defenses. Nah …
November 16th, 2023 at 7:59 am
This article will be the kiss of death.
November 16th, 2023 at 8:13 am
We might get eaten alive vs niners but should be good rest ofnseason lol
November 16th, 2023 at 8:24 am
Brandon,
Don’t give him any further attention. He is a Winston apologist who believes the Bucs failed, coaches failed him, defense failed him, kicker failed him, receivers failed him, etc. He believes that his style of play can produce wins despite evidence to the contrary. He hasn’t started a single game this season and yet he already has 3 INTs on 5.3 Y/A. Wooooooooooooooow….nope, no one misses that at all.
November 16th, 2023 at 9:32 am
Lets just be real world here
taking care of the ball IS more important than scoring – if you lose the game. NO one ever says the Qb’s int was negated by scoring the next drive and if the difference in the score board is a TD or less then just about every fan turns to the Qb’s int as a key factor. Multiple ints is even worse no matter how many TDs the Qb has in a game.
and its NOT just a bowles preference either. Its also a Baker’s agent thing. One of the highest priorities on a one year contract was to erase the narrative of being a int prone QB (never justified by the very tight differences in QBs in ints with even highly rated Qbs). Mission so far accomplished.