Baker Mayfield is a solid NFL quarterback, but he’s not a godsend the Tampa Bay Buccaneers are hoping for in the wake of Tom Brady’s second retirement.
Tampa Bay Buccaneers general manager Jason Licht has a job to do, but his team is finished competing for Super Bowls with Baker Mayfield joining the Mötley Crüe quarterback.
While I may like Mayfield more than most people do, Licht’s comments about what he brings to the Buccaneers feel despondent at best. He’s perfectly capable of starting games and being good in the stretches, but he’s not a franchise quarterback worth building around like he’s coming out of Oklahoma. Tampa Bay is about the gutter, where the Boxes may go first to the worst…
This is Licht’s statement about the Buccaneers’ recent free agent acquisition following the addition of Mayfield.
Mayfield is tough, competitive, and passionate, but I don’t see him elevating the Pirates’ solid wide receiver corps of Mike Evans, Chris Goodwin, and Russell Gage beyond what Tom Brady did. I’d love to be wrong here, but Atlanta is better, and so is New Orleans watching Carolina who’s probably the team to beat in the NFC South in 2023. It was a good run, Tampa.
The quarterback room of Mayfield and Kyle Trask instills fear in absolutely no one in the department.
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers believe Baker Mayfield is the answer to all of their problems
The good news for Mayfield is that he’s joining a section that includes Derek Carr, Desmond Reader and I think, either CJ Stroud or Anthony Richardson, as the other quarterbacks. This isn’t like facing off against Joe Borough, Lamar Jackson, and Ben Roethlisberger combined six times each season. Regardless, Mayfield has never shown at the NFL level that he can carry a team on his own anyway.
Truth be told, that’s totally fine. Most quarterbacks are not thermostats to begin with. They can tell the temperature in a room like a thermometer, but they don’t really have the potential to be a truly transcendent game-changer. Mayfield can win games in Tampa Bay, but this is a defensive-minded football team under the watch of Todd Balls. The team is feeling increasingly directionless lately.
All in all, we should encourage Mayfield to do a good job because it’s not only interesting, but also polarizing. Tampa Bay isn’t a big media market or a franchise with an incredibly great brand historically, but the Buccaneers are coming off their best three-year showing in over a decade. Again, the tides change quickly in a league like the NFL. As with the Buccaneers, the Mayfield is a salvageable sinking ship.
The big question is what is Flotsam and what is jetsam when it comes to NFC South franchises.
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