Baker Mayfield adds intrigue for Bucs — one way or another

Martin Rogers

FOX Sports Insider

How do you take a team mired in salary cap misery, one that finished below .500, then lost its most iconic and important player — and make it interesting?

Easy. Just sign Baker Mayfield.

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers did just that this offseason, thereby guaranteeing that the post-Tom Brady era might turn into a lot of things, but “boring” probably won’t be one of them. Not for now, at least.

And off we go again for the latest chapter with Mayfield, a player who the football public loves to talk about, argue about, speculate about, and every now and then say “I told you so” about.

Mayfield punches above his weight — far, far above it — in terms of sports radio debates and article headlines. Tampa Bay’s gamble is centered around the hope that he can also punch above his recent reputation in terms of quarterbacking performance, too.

But the real reason to pay attention to this developing saga and how it plays out is that the outlook for Mayfield’s NFL future depends on how things transpire for him in Central Florida over the coming tranche of footballing time. He is already an intriguing character, seemingly drawn to drama, never shy to speak his mind, capable of tantalizing glimpses of excellence and sudden implosions of form.

He is a figure who can get a fan base fired up in the right circumstances and put some butts in seats, yet the reality is that the chances won’t keep coming forever, even ones like this — for a team that didn’t have a lot to spend and have some offensive issues that won’t be basic to fix. If this opportunity doesn’t meet with reasonable (and relative) success, the next chance or chances will have even more stacked against him, if they come at all.

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LeSean McCoy, Joy Taylor, Ric Bucher and T. J. Houshmandzadeh debate whether Baker Mayfield is a starting QB in the NFL after signing a 1-year $8.5M contract with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

This spring, Brady’s retirement fell neatly for Mayfield. There weren’t many options in Baker’s basket, and for a QB looking for a spot to prove himself all over again, this was the neatest and smartest route to a starting job. Unless 2021 second-round pick Kyle Trask catches fire and surpasses expectations, the Bucs simply don’t have a lot of leeway to do anything else.

All things considered, the chances of high-level success with this move don’t seem to be particularly likely. The Bucs have precious little flexibility and are stuck with $35 million in cap hit left over from Brady’s deal. The organization borrowed from the future to go on one Super Bowl run and try unsuccessfully to repeat it a couple of times, and are on the painful back side of that spending now.

However, in a year when stability itself would be a worthy achievement, the bar is reasonably low. And in a world where the quarterback marketplace isn’t far away from $50 million being the new normal, getting even average play from a guy making a maximum of $8.5 million would be a spectacularly good deal.

That’s why the Bucs were able to talk themselves into it. In the immediate term, who is most likely to get things pointed straight? Mayfield, Trask, or even someone picked up with their 19th pick in the draft, by which time it is expected that several of the leading QB prospects will already be off the board? It is not hard to identify why the Bucs went in this direction.

Unless he had a personality transplant, you can count on him still having the fire to try to show Cleveland that they were wrong to move on from him, after he played under four head coaches in four years and elevated spirits during the 2020 postseason run. He’ll have a little chip on his shoulder — because he always does — when it comes to new NFC South division rival the Carolina Panthers, too, having been let go six games into a failed experiment there.

There are a lot of questions in Tampa. Center Ryan Jensen is coming off a serious knee injury, there is uncertainty at left tackle, last season saw no running game to speak of and there is a rookie offensive coordinator in Dave Canales.

There is also the matter of how to treat Mayfield, who is still only 27, though it seems like he’s been around for a long time. Will head coach Todd Bowles handle him like an experienced veteran, trusted to figure out his own stuff, or will there be some kind of development angle, the coach hoping he can untap some new elements from Mayfield’s game?

With Mayfield there are always questions, which is what makes him as interesting as he is. The range of outcomes is virtually limitless. The Baker Show is about to start up again. Don’t expect it to be dull.

Martin Rogers is a columnist for FOX Sports and the author of the FOX Sports Insider newsletter. Follow him on Twitter @MRogersFOX and subscribe to the daily newsletter.

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