Baker Mayfield Fumbles Away Season Opener In Cincinnati

I wasn’t super confident the Buccaneers would win, but I wasn’t anticipating this.

If you told me ahead of this game that Ja’Marr Chase would only have 12 yards and Tee Higgins only 59, I would be popping champagne for a decisive Bucs’ victory.

This proves I know nothing. What I didn’t anticipate is Baker trying to make the Buccaneers immediately regret the huge contract they just extended him too. Yes he was instrumental to getting the team back into the thing. But he was almost the sole reason they lost control in the first place. But I’m getting ahead of myself. We need to get some good out of the way before I get angry.

Josiah Shows Out

Josiah Trotter had the game of his life. It was a little rough early, but he had a monster second half and is a big reason why the Bengals couldn’t pull away until the end. He had 11 tackles, one tackle for loss, one pass break up, one QB hit, one sack, and one touchdown on a pick 6. A play that completely fooled Cool Joe. It’s not often you can do that to him. He is the first player in NFL history to have a sack and TD in his debut. Like I said, he had some rookie woes in the beginning, but he quickly sharpened up. Almost every positive play came from him on defense.

I think most the WRs and Bucky Irving had a really good game. Outside Tez Johnson dropping a fingertip catch, every wideout was making plays. Godwin didn’t look like he had missed a step and caught every target for 40 yards, Egbuka had a few clutch catches (although he disappeared in the second half), and Ted Hurst just appeared in the final drive and became Baker’s favorite target for a hot minute. And even though Bucky didn’t have much of a chance to run it (plus adding a fumble of his own), he looked like himself. Scored a TD and had himself a few good runs and catches.

Baked

But in a week that Maye and Stafford withered into nothing under the lights, Baker told them to hold his beer. He was truly awful. Baker had multiple fumbles that were a result of him just holding onto the ball for four seconds. The Bengals scoop and score was a perfect example. He just didn’t feel the guy coming up behind him. True he did help the offense move most every drive, but the ball may as well have been lathered in butter. You cannot expect to win when your star QB is giving the ball away like Halloween candy. He cost the Buccaneers before the game really got going.

3rd & Thor

Some people had questions about the Anzalone signing. Especially when you look at his age and fading athleticism, but the positive was supposed to be he could cover, and cover well. Well he was virtually unplayable all game. He couldn’t cover Mike Gesicki (although no one could) and missed tackles all game long. This was a game where a lot of guys were missing tackles, but Anzalone still stood out as really bad.

Defenseless

The d-line as a whole looked awful. No nice way of putting it. Reuben Bain was a non-factor and I couldn’t have told you who was opposite. It may as well have been a scarecrow for all the good the edge rushers did. Calijah Kancey felt like the only guy who wanted to play along the d-line. It was so bad Josiah Trotter had to come in just to get a sack on the board.

Would’ve, Should’ve 

I think without the fumbles the Bucs get an ugly win. But that doesn’t matter does it? The Bengals could also say if they weren’t lined up offside on nearly every defensive possession, they would’ve won by multiple scores. I’ll give the team credit for making it a game late and not giving up, but it was a losing battle. The theme of the game was player execution, or lackthereof. I didn’t even mention this before, but I thought Zac Robinson did a decent job. It wasn’t perfect as I thought he could’ve leaned on the run more, which may have calmed the offense down quite a bit. But what can he do when Baker fumbles three times and Bucky has his traditional one fumble in a season today. Nothing. Todd Bowles isn’t blameless as he had a hard time stopping the Bengals between the numbers on numerous drives when the Bengals didn’t start in Buccaneers’ territory. But also, was he supposed to scheme around his green dot LB missing basic tackles? They have the Browns next week at home. If they struggle in that game, it’s time to worry.