Bucs QB Baker Mayfield.
If you clip a bird’s wings, you’re basically left with a feathered squirrel.
That’s the balancing act the Bucs and quarterback Baker Mayfield have to navigate each year.
There is no quarterback in the NFL with better intangibles than Mayfield. No quarterback has more heart. No quarterback has more guts. And no quarterback plays with the passion of a linebacker better than Mayfield.
But that’s also Mayfield’s kryptonite. Playing with that devil-may-care mentality puts Mayfield in harm’s way. And as Bucco Bruce Arians likes to say, in the NFL, harm will find you.
But the flip side is, if Mayfield isn’t Mayfield, he’s no longer the dangerous quarterback he is. Mayfield is at his best when he puts the team on his back and lays it all on the line, just to get a first down, forget a touchdown.
After former Bucs linebacker Lavonte David finally spoke the truth out loud that everyone seemed to believe, David said injuries really messed up Mayfield in the second half of the season.
And with Mayfield being a shell of himself, the Bucs lost seven of their final nine games and missed the playoffs.
The creator, curator and overall guru of Pro Football Talk, the great Mike Florio, heard David’s words and said on a recent edition of PFT Live, seen weekday mornings on NBC Sports Network, that Mayfield may drag the Bucs down if he doesn’t start avoiding hits.
“I’m a big advocate of a quarterback’s obligation to keep himself healthy,” Florio said. “Baker Mayfield does not keep himself healthy. He doesn’t miss games, though.
“He started every game last year. He was only listed as questionable twice. I went through the week-by-week injury reports after I saw those quotes from Lavonte David. He had a bunch of injuries, a bunch of different body parts showed up.
“Yeah, he was questionable twice, and never missed a start. He refuses to. I think it became a problem in his last year in Cleveland. Because there’s a point where it’s impairing your performance because you’re playing hurt.”
Florio said a toned-down, yet still effective Mayfield being on the field is a whole lot better than a beat-up, ineffective Mayfield being on the field.
And Florio added until Mayfield can force himself to be more careful, the Bucs will always dance on the high wire late in the season hoping Mayfield is healthy enough to be effective.
“Better to just be healthy,” Florio said. “It’s better to just be healthy. You’ve got to find a way to avoid taking those hits, and his toughness becomes a potential liability if it affects his performance.
“And I think that’s what the Buccaneers are struggling with, because [when Mayfield was] healthy early in the year, lights out, like Lavonte said. Later in the year, when he’s struggling to get to the finish line and parts have fallen off and he refuses to take a game off and let the backup play [hurt the Bucs].
“You know, at some point, the starter is sufficiently impaired by injury that it’s better to go with somebody who’s 100 percent and let him play. But I think that’s part of the overall Baker Mayfield experience; it is a part of what makes him great.
“It’s greatness to a fault. It’s stubbornness to a fault. It’s commitment to his craft to a fault because he keeps playing when he shouldn’t be playing because of all the different injuries that he has, and those are just the ones we know about.”
Joe absolutely gets where Florio is coming from. And Joe has stated several times in the past that the Bucs should have sat Mayfield for a game or two to get him healthy. Even if Mayfield balked, someone should have been the adult in the room.
That’s on the coaches.
But here is the deal: Would the Bucs, with all of their injuries, an offensive line that was riddled with injuries, injuries to Mike Evans and Chris Godwin, and their No. 1 running back getting beat up and missing time, would the Bucs have jumped out to a 6-2 record if Mayfield played conservatively?
No way. So yeah, the Bucs missed the playoffs last year, in part, because Mayfield was so beat up and playing far less than 100 percent.
Problem is, if Mayfield was neutered, no way the Bucs would have been in the playoff hunt to begin with.
And that’s the double-edged sword you get with Mayfield. You get the highest of highs and, if he is hurt, a fair share of lows, too.