Analyzing Baker Mayfield.
In the offseason, Joe was listening to the Ross Tucker Football Podcast when the subject of Baker Mayfield came up.
Tucker, who has arguably the best series of pure, year-round football podcasts on the interwebs, had on his regular guest, noted NFL Films X’s and O’s man Greg Cosell. Both were talking about Mayfield.
Joe knows that since the 2025 regular season ended, offensive coordinator Josh Grizzard became the fall guy, the scapegoat. At the time, Joe didn’t understand the finger-pointing at Grizzard. No one said a peep about Grizzard when the Bucs’ offense hummed before the bye.
All of a sudden the Bucs lose seven of their last nine games and Grizzard is the culprit when it was the defense that played horrific and lost too many games?
Joe is not excusing Grizzard but it all just seemed odd.
Tucker and Cosell were trying to figure out why Mayfield fell off the cliff after the bye. Mayfield went from perhaps being the league’s offensive MVP to giving Bucs fans flashbacks to Casey Weldon.
“It’s always hard to know Ross what’s in a quarterback’s head when he plays,” Cosell began. “But for the first part of the season, Baker Mayfield was as decisive as any quarterback in the league.
“He just seemed to know exactly where he wanted to go with the football. He got it out. He made the right reads, the right throws.”
Cosell didn’t want to use injuries as an excuse for Mayfield. That’s too easy, Cosell said. Of course, better receivers are going to make plays.
Though Cosell didn’t say it, Joe will point out in December Mayfield had Chris Godwin, Mike Evans and Jalen McMillan back from injuries. Most quarterbacks would salivate to have those three to throw to.
“The thing that really stood out to me about Baker, and again, I’m not in his head, but he just was not decisive. And it’s very odd, because he’s a veteran, he’s got experience, it’s a system he’s familiar with. But he just gets stuck too many times in the pocket without delivering the football.
“And you know, when that happens with a quarterback, the entire passing game is totally disrupted.”
Cosell went on to say he thought Mayfield lost confidence. And that leads to indecisiveness.
Did Mayfield lose confidence because he was hurt and didn’t think he could make specific throws? Did defenses discover a tell on Mayfield midway through the season and that defensive adjustment threw him off so much that Mayfield got rattled?
Or was Grizzard unable to adjust to teams defending Mayfield in a different way?
These questions need to be answered before the Bucs can start dreaming about returning to the playoffs.