Bucs QB Baker Mayfield – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

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Pewter Report’s Scott Reynolds answers your questions from the @PewterReport X account this week in the Bucs Mailbag. Submit your question to SR each week via X using the hashtag #PRMailbag.  Here are the Bucs questions we chose to answer for this week’s edition.

QUESTION: Why do Tampa Bay fans give Baker Mayfield so much unwarranted hate when he’s the best QB the franchise has ever had?

ANSWER: Well, I think you’re forgetting about Tom Brady. You know, the greatest quarterback in NFL history who played in Tampa Bay from 2020-22 and helped the Bucs win Super Bowl LV? Brady went 32-19 in red and pewter, including a 5-2 mark in the postseason, and helped the team win two NFC South titles while also setting a franchise record for single season touchdown passes with 43 TDs. So unless Baker Mayfield wins a Super Bowl in Tampa Bay, he will have to stand in line behind Brady when it comes to ranking Bucs quarterbacks.

Yet I don’t understand the pessimism – I think the term “hate” is a little overblown – about Mayfield. I’m fine with some skepticism, as I too have some doubts about Mayfield’s ability to make enough plays to win big playoff games at this juncture. But there are some Bucs fans who are anti-Mayfield and suggest that he’s just not a good quarterback, and I don’t understand that.

Since arriving in Tampa Bay in 2023, Mayfield has thrown 95 touchdown passes, which is the second-most in the NFL during that span behind only Detroit’s Jared Goff, who has thrown 101. Including rushing scores, Mayfield has accounted for 100 touchdowns since 2023, which ranks fourth in the league behind Buffalo’s Josh Allen (124), Goff (104) and Philadelphia’s Jalen Hurts (103).

Bucs QB Baker Mayfield – Photo by: USA Today

When healthy and in a system that played to his strengths in 2024, Mayfield completed a franchise-best 71.4% of his passes for 4,500 yards and 41 touchdowns, which was the second-most TD passes in a single season in Tampa Bay history behind Brady’s 43 in 2021. That led to Mayfield becoming the only two-time Pro Bowl quarterback in franchise history. If some fans don’t think Mayfield is elite, I’m okay with that notion. But to say that Mayfield isn’t a very good quarterback is naive and foolish.

Is Mayfield a Top 10 QB in the NFL? Well, that’s subjective, and if he is I would place him at No. 10 or close to it. I think that’s Mayfield’s ceiling, which is quite good. And his floor is probably around No. 15, which would place him in the upper half of current NFL quarterbacks. That’s a pretty good place for a franchise to be in – to have a QB that is somewhere between 10-15 in the league. That’s not a bad consolation prize for not having an elite top 5 QB.

The question I like to ask the Mayfield detractors is who is going to replace him if you want him gone? The Bucs only have unproven Connor Bazelak, who was an undrafted free agent and the team’s third-string QB, on the roster. This is not a great quarterback draft, and the team has more pressing needs with using premium picks to fix the defense. Great quarterbacks seldom hit free agency and this franchise has yet to draft a good one in 50 years. Mayfield is as good as it gets right now for this team.

Is he as good as Brady was? No, but Mayfield is better than Brad Johnson, and he won a Super Bowl in Tampa Bay being surrounded by weapons to throw to and playing opposite a great defense. If the Buccaneers continue to build the roster around Mayfield’s talents and fortify the defense I believe Tampa Bay has a chance to win a Super Bowl with him if he stays healthy and if Zac Robinson’s offense can get his play back to a 2024 level like it was with Liam Coen.

QUESTION: With the combine a week away I thought it might be a good time to ask Todd Bowles: “What was your epiphany last offseason, and why did that realization not translate to field and result in wins?”

Similarly, “Todd, have you had an epiphany yet this offseason? If not, could one be to have the defense play simpler and faster with a base defense to fall back on?” The Seattle defense didn’t look to be “scheming and tricking” the New England offense in the Super Bowl – it just lined up and played fast.

ANSWER: You are correct about Seattle’s defense. Outside of blitzing nickel cornerback Devon Witherspoon in the B gap and off the edge a total of seven times, which was very effective, Seattle just lined up and played great, physical straight up defense. The Seahawks defense wasn’t terribly multiple or exotic and relied on pressure from the front four more often than not.

ESPN reported that in the regular season “Seattle blitzed only 20.7% of the time, the fifth-lowest rate in the NFL. On Sunday, that number actually dropped to 15.1% – but it was heavily split by half. [Seahawks head coach Mike] Macdonald blitzed [Patriots quarterback Drake] Maye 33.3% of the time in the first half before dialing it back and sending extra rushers just 8% of the time after the break.”

Bucs head coach Todd Bowles – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

Sometimes less is more, and where players don’t have a complex defensive scheme to absorb and think through the result can mean playing faster. Bucs Hall of Famer Rondé Barber has lamented over the fact that Todd Bowles’ defensive scheme is too multiple and doesn’t really have a base scheme to fall back on – either in the team’s 3-4 front or nickel defense.

Part of the problem is that the Bucs don’t have the horses up front to effective pressure the quarterback with a four-man rush, especially with defensive tackle Calijah Kancey missing 14 games and 31-year old free agent edge rusher Haason Reddick being a bust of a signing.

As for Bowles’ “eureka moment” which he discussed at the NFL Annual Meeting last spring, he never revealed what that was. I’ll ask him at the NFL Scouting Combine what it was, but I’m not expecting him to reveal it given how poorly his defense played for much of the 2025 season. And I doubt Bowles will be forthcoming about any new eureka moments he may or may have had this offseason given how that statement last year crashed and burned.

QUESTION: Zac Robinson brings outside voices and perspectives from college and his past with Falcons, but this head coach just promotes from within and then hires his son to be part of the staff. This is a middle finger to Bucs fans, and now Todd Bowles has an army of yes men. Lovie Smith 2.0 incoming?

ANSWER: I think Bucs fans are freaking out about this way too much and I’m fine with Todd Bowles hiring his son as a defensive assistant. This isn’t like Lovie Smith hiring his sons, Miles and Mikal, to be on his staff in 2014. Miles, Smith’s youngest son, was Tampa Bay’s defensive quality control coach, while Mikal was the Bucs’ safeties coach. I have no problem with head coaches hiring their sons for quality control roles to break them into the world of coaching because of the entry level status of that position.

But Lovie Smith’s decision to place Mikal Smith in charge of Tampa Bay’s safeties from 2014-15 was disastrous. Mark Barron and Dashon Goldson under-performed under Smith’s watch, and multiple sources told me that Mikal Smith was an awful position coach. Turns out he was an awful human being, too. After the Bucs fired Lovie Smith and his defensive assistants, including his sons following the 2015 season, Mikal Smith was arrested and indicted in Arizona in 2020 for sex trafficking, pandering, receiving earnings from a prostitute, money laundering, conspiracy and illegal control of enterprise.

Former Rutgers DB, new Bucs defensive assistant Todd Bowles Jr. – Photo by: IMAGN Images – Vincent Carchietta

That’s a strong case for nepotism not working out. But let’s not forget that former Redskins coach Mike Shanahan hired his son, Kyle Shanahan, to be his offensive coordinator from 2010-13 without play-calling duties. That worked out pretty well for the Shanahans with Kyle becoming the 49ers head coach in 2017 and leading San Francisco to two Super Bowl appearances.

Bowles hiring Todd Bowles Jr., a former college safety, to be a defensive assistant on his staff seems harmless. Bowles wants his son to gain some coaching experience at the NFL while he is still employed with the Bucs. You can’t fault the man for that, especially with his son not running a room and just doing entry level assignments in his first coaching opportunity.

In the world of careers it’s not just what you know, but who you know, and Todd Bowles Jr. is simply using his resources – his father – to get his feet wet in the world of coaching. Look for the younger Bowles to assist new safeties coach Tim Atkins this year.

QUESTION: Devin Culp is 6-foot-4, 238 pounds. He runs a 4.47 40 and has a 40-inch vertical. Mike Evans is 6-foot-5, 233 pounds and ran a 4.53 40 and has a 37-inch vertical. Why don’t they transition Culp to wide receiver? He perfectly fits the mold of an Evans replacement. He has great hands and stretched the field at Washington.

ANSWER: The simple answer is because Devin Culp is a tight end and not a wide receiver. And Culp is not even a starting-caliber tight end. He’s been the Bucs’ third-string tight end for the past two seasons. So if he’s not a starting-caliber tight end it’s doubtful he could be a starting-caliber receiver.

Let’s remember that Culp was a seventh-round pick for a reason. Great player measureables don’t always equate to great players. In four years at Washington, Culp caught 66 passes for 711 yards (10.8 avg.) and four touchdowns. As a senior he had 16 receptions for 208 yards (13 avg.) and two touchdowns. Culp wasn’t even the starter at tight end. That was Jack Westover, who caught 46 passes for 433 yards (9.4 avg.) and four TDs that season.

Bucs TE Devin Culp – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

In video games like Madden you can have players switch positions, but it’s not that way in real life football. Culp might have some pretty good straight-line speed, but it’s the fluidity, route-running and acceleration off the line that is needed to play receiver and be able to cook cornerbacks. Culp only has six catches for 94 yards (15.7 avg.) and one touchdown in his Tampa Bay career, including his six-yard TD last year.

He’s had opportunities where he’s been split out and isolated one-on-one in practice over the last two years. Yet the coaches obviously haven’t seen enough for him to move up the depth chart at tight end – let alone play wide receiver. Let’s see if Culp can make some strides this offseason and in training camp. He needs to really make some improvement as an in-line blocker.