Can We Trust Baker Mayfield and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers?
Credit: Matthew Hinton-Imagn Images
If you were to tell me before Sunday’s game that the Tampa Bay Buccaneers would beat the New Orleans Saints by a score of 51-27, I would’ve been impressed. Scoring over 50 points against your biggest rival in a must-win game should leave Bucs fans feeling pretty great about the outlook of this team going forward. Tampa Bay is now 4-2 and currently in second place in the NFC South, by virtue of the Atlanta Falcons holding the head-to-head tiebreaker.
It almost sounds too good to be true, because it is. That game was an emotional roller coaster if I’ve ever seen one. The Bucs jumped to a commanding 17-0 lead to start the first quarter, only for the team to completely self-destruct early in the second quarter. Within a matter of 10 minutes, the Saints scored 20 unanswered points and took a 20-17 lead with 8:37 left in the second quarter.
The Buccaneers eventually got back on track in the second half and handily beat the Spencer Rattler-led Saints. Yet, the narrative surrounding this game can’t be about how the Bucs scored nearly twice as many points as New Orleans did in a blowout win. Because in actuality, it was never really a blowout win, despite what the final score suggests. This game leaves fans with more questions than answers, and it makes you wonder whether Baker Mayfield and the Bucs can be trusted down the stretch.
On one hand, the Buccaneers have earned the right to be trusted the same way other playoff contenders are. Tampa Bay has won the NFC South three consecutive years, and they’re absolutely capable of winning their fourth-straight division title if they can split the series with the Atlanta Falcons. The Buccaneers defense is still above-average and now Antonie Winfield Jr. is healthy. The duo of Chris Godwin and Mike Evans are still effective despite both players being on the wrong side of 30. Not to mention, the run game is showing signs of improvement with the ascension of Bucky Irving and, most recently, Sean Tucker.
In a way, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers perfectly represent the city of Tampa itself. When I think of Tampa, I think of a gritty industrial port city with a large Air Force presence and a bit of Cuban flair. Despite its overall grungy facade, Tampa has pockets of beauty within it. Ybor City has some charming, historic brick buildings, the Riverwalk downtown has gorgeous views of the Hillsborough River and Tampa’s skyline, and Ballast Point Park in South Tampa brings me peace every time I go there with views of the bay.
Likewise, the Buccaneers are a gritty team. They don’t make it their entire personality like the Detroit Lions do, but the Bucs have consistently been a tough out over the last couple of years. They play an ugly style of football that doesn’t feel sustainable, and a lot of that has to do with Mayfield. Baker is an undersized quarterback who doesn’t have the prettiest deep ball, and his gunslinger mentality brings with it some bone-headed decisions, especially when he tries to play hero ball.
Mayfield isn’t your prototypical pro-style quarterback, but he makes up for it with his infectious, trash-talking personality. He’s a fun-sized Philip Rivers, a QB who extends plays and can scramble for 15 yards when you least expect it. That’s probably not a perfect player comparison, but both of those guys had this bravado about them that permeated across the entire team. Sunday’s game reflected that, because Baker was on a roll in the first quarter going 7-for-7 with 71 yards to start the game, and the Bucs dominated the Saints early on.
After his perfect start in the first quarter, Mayfield went 11-for-22 throwing one touchdown pass and three interceptions, with New Orleans leading 27-24 at halftime. Just as Baker’s performance started to deteriorate in that second quarter, the rest of the Bucs team emulated their quarterback’s volatility. Their special teams unit allowed a Rashid Shaheed punt return touchdown, and the defense let a rookie QB in Rattler and the Saints’ offense march down the field for a touchdown.
At their best, Tampa Bay looks like a team that can hang with bona-fide playoff contenders, and it’s usually because Baker Mayfield is lighting teams up and everything is going right. However, when Baker gets over-confident and starts making errant throws, or when the team around him is falling apart and he goes into hero-ball mode to try and compensate, things start to unravel very quickly. Fortunately, the Bucs were able to bounce back and beat the Saints, but can we trust Mayfield and this team’s high-roller mentality? Coming out of Week 6, it’s hard to say.
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