Easy To Pull For Baker Mayfield
May 11th, 2023
Bucs QB Baker Mayfield.
Most national talking heads and keyboard pests seem convinced the Bucs will stink in this first year of the post-Tom Brady era.
If that does happen, Jason McCourty of NFL Network believes the Bucs have one player who can bring Bucs fans together in a singular cause. That would be quarterback Baker Mayfield.
McCourty went through the roster of all 32 NFL teams to find a player fans can get behind and pull for. In Tampa, to the chagrin of the Kyle Trask crowd, McCourty chose Mayfield.
Though he’s had mixed results as a starting quarterback in this league, Mayfield is a guy whom people are drawn to. Whether you love him or hate him, he’s an interesting player to follow as a swashbuckling competitor with a charismatic personality that others rally around. Let’s see if he sticks as the Bucs’ new QB1 in this latest chapter of his career.
Well, if Mayfield plays well and the Baker Mayfield Project looks like it has a shot of succeeding, Bucs fans will rally behind Mayfield.
But if he stinks the joint up like he did in Carolina last year, Bucs fans will be screaming for college quarterbacks Caleb Williams, Drake Maye, Michael Penix or Quinn Ewers.
May 11th, 2023 at 6:20 am
or better yet, Kyle Trask
May 11th, 2023 at 6:53 am
Wherever Penix goes, he’s sure to have one of the highest selling jerseys
May 11th, 2023 at 7:26 am
How ’bout let’s see who starts and at least play one game before we continue to talk about next year’s QB.
May 11th, 2023 at 8:19 am
Easy for everyone, except of course the Gainesville groupies who think Trask is the second coming of Brady simply because he got to watch him and take notes.
I’m rooting for the guy who’s starting, something the Trask fan club largely won’t do if their guy isn’t it.
May 11th, 2023 at 8:30 am
I guess I’m in the Mayfield camp, but on a short leash. If he can’t put Ws on the board, give Trask a chance.
May 11th, 2023 at 8:31 am
Baker didn’t play well for an NFL team yet. That’s why he didn’t have a contract at the end of the season. If the BUCS are giving him the job without competition what does that say about the organization.
May 11th, 2023 at 9:34 am
I could have pulled for him, if he stayed in Cleveland. He didn’t, and it is his own fault for getting happy feet and screwing it up.
I pulled for him when he got to the playoffs, then he showed that he wasn’t worth me pulling for.
He showed that he is a mediocre QB, and I am pulling for something more than that. Maybe it is because I don’t have any faith in the Bowles cleaner’s defense being able to stay stout, so a better QB will be necessary.
May 11th, 2023 at 9:39 am
My guess is the guy who starts game one will have about four games to demonstrate that he is ‘the guy’. If the Bucs are are 0 and 4 or an ugly 1 and 3 a change will be made to the ‘other guy’.
May 11th, 2023 at 10:01 am
Fans are fickle. If Mayfield plays well, the fans will love him. If Trask plays well, they’ll love Trask instead. If the Bucs start out losing, fans will hate both. Stay tuned to these pages, where the wrath will be displayed!
May 11th, 2023 at 10:31 am
Did anyone think Geno Smith was going to win the Job in Seattle? Didn’t seem like the most popular choice in the onset – then he threw for 70% and 30 TDs.
NFL is high stakes. No room for the timid. The safe play isn’t always the smart play. You have to be bold enough to take risk.
We know what Baker is – a guy who will sometimes flash but also a guy who has issues with INTs and doesn’t throw for a lot of yards. Has a losing record in a large enough sample size and on his 4th team in 6 years.
Trask? Less is known. But we know he’s coachable, a good student of the game who takes instruction to heart. We also know he’s a prototype in size and can make the throws. He put up Heisman worthy numbers in college. Now he’s working with the #1s so the true evaluation begins now.
Trask might not be the consensus choice right now, but he could be the better option as the starter. What’s popular, what’s “conventional wisdom” doesn’t always translate. Baker has a lot to prove. People laud his time with the Rams as a resurgence, but take a real look at the numbers – they weren’t that great. Too many people want to gift the guy the job on day 1 when he really doesn’t have the track record to warrant that. This thing needs to play out.
May 11th, 2023 at 10:40 am
I’m not enthused about the idea of screaming for Penix.
May 11th, 2023 at 12:07 pm
I am not excited about Baker but to suggest that he has not played well at all in the NFL is false. He was a close 2nd to Barkley his rookie year in the AP offensive rookie of the year.
Some fans on this site suggest that QBR is the new standard of evaluating quarterbacks in this league, it is not. QBR was introduced by ESPN evaluation team in wanting to give more value to running quarterbacks (not a bad hypothesis). But it has actually proved to be less accurate rating a quarterback success than the old standard passer rating. If you want a running QB that does not win but gives exciting in game action, then QBR should be your stat. If you want a successful record with more wins at then the end of the season, then you should lean towards passer rating as your stat. You take the top 20 in QBR every year and compare to the top 20 in passer rating. The top 20 in passer rating have more wins.
Jacoby Brissett last year. Was 8th in QBR and 19th in passer rating.
Trubinsky was 3rd in QBR in 2018 and 16th in passer rating.
Looking at passer rating it still shows Baker with solid passer ratings of 93.7 in 2018 and 95.9 in 2020. Jameis’ highest passer rating in Tampa was 92.2.
If we can win with Jameis, we can win with Baker.
May 11th, 2023 at 12:20 pm
Don’t care who wins the job but if I have to lean, I hope it is Trask. It will be better for the Bucs salary cap this year and next year.
Baker had the worst receiving corps in the NFL last year when he was playing for the Rams.
I didn’t watch the Rams games or the stats, I just know that Cupp was out.
Stafford had Cupp for all of his games and Stafford struggled with the receiving corps with Cupp. Stafford’s worst season in a while. Seemed like the Rams were just a bad offense last year. 32nd in yards for the season.
May 11th, 2023 at 12:22 pm
I will say one thing, Baker Mayfield throws dramatic interceptions, when he throws them.
LOL, many are real game changers//drive killers.
May 11th, 2023 at 1:41 pm
Geno711 Says:
Some fans on this site suggest that QBR is the new standard of evaluating quarterbacks in this league, it is not.
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Wrong. QBR is absolutely the best, single, stat available for evaluating QBs. Also your history of QBR is fake news. QBR was introduced because way too much credit was being given to QBs running west coast offenses, where they’re completing 70% of their passes, but all on short passes. Also to stop punishing QBs for things like throwing INTs on hail marys at halftime. Finally, and biggest thing to me, is to stop rewarding cowardly QBs like Derek Carr, who, on 3rd and 12, will throw 6 yard passes to boost his completion percentage, but does nothing to help his team, just his personal stats. In QBR, down and distance is taken into account.
That, however, doesn’t mean you ONLY use QBR to judge QBs, but if you only have a single number to look at, that is it.
With that said, Baker not only has been the worst QB in QBR over the last two years, it’s backed up by his tape. Go watch it, like I did, before saying people don’t know what they’re talking about. His tape is garbage – and it matches his stats. This wasn’t a guy playing aggressive, who in hopeless situations is still out there chucking the ball downfield, stats be damned. This is a guy who would pass up 1% harder throws on 3rd and long to complete those 6 yard easy passes to the RB, which meant a punt. This is a guy who was always looking for the easy throw and rarely testing defenses. He’s was awful. He played safe AND he was terrible. That’s the worst combo you can have. A boring, uninteresting, safety first QB who still turns the ball over but makes up for it by not scoring points.
May 11th, 2023 at 4:25 pm
Rod … Me thinks you’re being a bit harsh on Mayfield. I’ll readily admit that I want (and expect) Trask to win the Bucs’ QB competition, but looking back at Baker’s career, I see a guy actually had a lot going against him.
Start with 4 head coaches & 4 OCs in his 4 years in Cleveland, plus another 2 HCs & 2 OCs last year. That’d be a LOT to adapt to. But then evaluate his sacks over his 5 years.
o 2018: 25 sacks in 14 games (4.9%) … 6-7 record.
o 2019: 40 sacks in 16 games (7.0%) … 6-10 record.
o 2020: 26 sacks in 16 games (5.1%) … 11-5 record.
o 2021: 43 sacks in 14 games (9.3%) … 6-8 record.
o 2022 (Panthers): 19 sacks in 7 games (8.4%) … 1-5 record.
o 2022 (Rams): 17 sacks in 5 games (11.6%) … 1-3 record.
That’s 170 sacks in 72 games, an average of 2.36 sacks/game. Tom Brady took 65 sacks in 50 games in Tampa, an average of only 1.3 sacks/game. This might be a big generalization, but it looks to me like when Mayfield has good protection, he’s a decent QB (although not a spectacular QB, as evidenced by his 1 winning season in 5 years … the year he had the best protection). When his protection breaks down, so does he.
Personally I think Trask has more up-side, but the only way to evaluate that is under fire.
May 11th, 2023 at 8:27 pm
Baker the faker will do it. My prediction is Baker 4,000 plus yds…..35 touchdowns, 10 or 12 interceptions with a QBR of 98 or so
…face facts. Baker is the best faker, Buccaneers win 12 or 13 games
May 11th, 2023 at 10:12 pm
Mayfield had 6 different offenses he had to learn in 5 years in the league – all with extremely bad football teams. Trask was with the same team and the same offense for two years and couldn’t even manage to become the backup QB. My bet is that Baker picks this new offense up WAY faster than Trask.
May 13th, 2023 at 4:27 pm
“Trask was with the same team and the same offense for two years and couldn’t even manage to become the backup QB.”
Disagree, Tom didnt want a rookie as the guy who helps him from the sideline. He wanted a vet (Gabert)?
I dont understand this agument. As long as Brady was there it didnt mattter who the backup was. GABBERT WAS A BETTER BACKUP TO BRADY—BUT— TRASK IS THE BETTER STARTER HAD HE WENT DOWN.
Is that easy to understand?