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About the Author: Joshua Queipo

Avatar Of Joshua Queipo
Josh Queipo joined the Pewter Report team in 2022, specializing in salary cap analysis and film study. In addition to his official role with the website and podcast, he has an unofficial role as the Pewter Report team’s beaming light of positivity and jokes. A staunch proponent of the forward pass, he is a father to two amazing children and loves sushi, brisket, steak and bacon, though the order changes depending on the day. He graduated from the University of South Florida in 2008 with a degree in finance.

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The Bucs have a new quarterback at the top of their depth chart. And while it is an “open competition” to see who will hold the title of QB1 when the season opens on September 10th in Minnesota, Baker Mayfield is the odds-on favorite to be the starter. Recently I ranked Mayfield third in my NFC South positional rankings and then followed that up with a more glowing look at what he could be if his left shoulder is fully healed from his 2021 injuries.

Those two articles in such close proximity to each other begged the following question from a loyal reader…

Captain Sly

First off, he was spot on with his comment off the top. It was a pretty good breakdown by me (I kid)! But to Captain Sly’s larger point it may seem that I oscillate wildly in my analysis of Baker Mayfield. And to a certain extent nothing could be closer to the truth. The reason for that is a little thing called variance. Some quarterbacks have low variance, while others have extremely high swings in the level of their play. Bucs fans have been treated to both ends of the spectrum in their last two starting signal-callers.

Bucs Qb Baker Mayfield

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

Jameis Winston was as high variance as they come. The high-end plays Winston could create had you thinking he might be the second coming of Brett Favre. And his low-end plays had you thinking he was the second coming of…well…Brett Favre (Favre was a high variance player as well, he just skewed much more to the high while Winston skewed more evenly to both sides).

On the other hand, Tom Brady was about as consistent as they come. From year-to-year Brady’s level of play was extremely clustered as he could be counted on to deliver a very consistent performance. Mayfield is much more like Winston than he is Brady. And with that Bucs fans can expect both incredible and disastrous performances.

But what are my overall thoughts on what Baker Mayfield will be this year? I’ll try and give a comprehensive assessment of the various things that stand out to me and a final assessment of what I think Mayfield will be in 2023.

Baker Mayfield Out Of Structure

One area Bucs fans will see more of in 2023 is out of structure plays. Tom Brady’s age and limited mobility resulted in very few of these plays over his tenure in Tampa Bay. Baker Mayfield is much more comfortable and adept at getting outside the pocket and trying to create if his protection breaks down or if the designed play does not unfold in a positive fashion. That propensity to try and create for the “second play” is something wide receivers coach Brad Idzik spoke about during his recent appearance on the Pewter Report Podcast.

But with Baker and his high-variance ways, that increased volume of out of structure plays comes with an inherently high payoff as well as high risk. The high-end can look like this.

But the downside with these plays can be disastrous and self-inflicted. Mayfield struggles with pocket presence and can move out of structure when he doesn’t need to, feeling phantom pressure and bailing from clean pockets. The results can be disastrous.

His out of structure ways are part of (but not all of) a concerningly high average time to throw. In 2022 Mayfield had the 28th longest average time to throw among qualified passers at 2.89 seconds. Now time to throw isn’t necessarily correlated with passer ability, as there are different types of quarterbacks. But Mayfield’s time to throw are akin to better, more mobile players like Jalen Hurts, Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen. And looking through Mayfield’s career his time to throw has been fairly stable as one of the longer to throw quarterbacks in the league having never ranked higher than 16th in any given year (2019).

This reluctance to get rid of the ball more quickly also leads to a higher-than-average sack rate. He led the league in pressure to sack ratio in 2022 (30.8% of the time he was pressured led to a sack). In 2021 he also led the league in this area (29.1%). With a right side of the line that will feature not one, but two unproven players and Mayfield’s tendency to bail to his right, this gives me a lot of concern for the negative plays Mayfield will invite that Brady avoided.

His Arm Strength Is Awesome

Baker Mayfield can physically make all of the throws. He has the arm strength to dart tight window throws with velocity as well as hit deep bombs. When healthy, his imagination is the only thing that can limit his throws.

If you want to see that in dots form, I have you covered.

He should do just fine hitting Bucs receivers Mike Evans, Chris Godwin and Trey Palmer deep, as I doubt any of them will consistently outrun Mayfield’s arm. In addition to the deep bombs, he can throw frozen ropes that require velocity to be successful like this one.

I’m aware the play was an incompletion, but it was still a great representation of his arm talent.

Baker Mayfield’s Accuracy Is Not Awesome

But while he has arm talent for days, Baker Mayfield’s accuracy is more erratic and overall, below average for a starting quarterback in the NFL. Since 2018 (when he entered the league) there have been 50 quarterbacks who have attempted at least 600 passes. Mayfield ranks 45th among them in adjusted completion percentage.

For those who are unfamiliar with the term, it attempts to filter out throw-aways and drops from a quarterback’s completion percentage to get a more stable idea of how accurate that passer is. The average for that 50-quarterback sample size over those five years is 72.72%. Former Saints great Drew Brees leads the pack at 79.04%.

Mayfield clocks in at 69.68% ahead of only Taylor Heinecke, Davis Mills, Jameis Winston, Drew Lock, and Zach Wilson – and just behind Sam Darnold, Joe Flacco, Mitch Trubisky and Andy Dalton. Not exactly a who’s who of future Hall of Famers.

Baker Mayfield Struggles (Comparatively) With the Intermediate Middle of The Field

Bucs Qb Baker Mayfield

Bucs QB Baker Mayfield – Photo by: USA Today

One of the hardest areas of the field for a quarterback to throw to is the intermediate middle of the field (from 10-19 yards). It tends to have the heaviest traffic with robbing safeties and dropping linebackers creating a groundswell (or should I say air-swell) of danger for the over-aggressive quarterback who tries to fit balls into tight windows.

But it also tends to be the area of the field where the best quarterbacks can truly set themselves apart from the rest of the field. This is due to a higher frequency of targets because they know that they can survive in this dangerous area as well as a higher success rate.

Looking at that same sample of quarterbacks over the 2018-2022 seasons I attempted to discern which quarterbacks had the most success as well as frequency in targeting this particular area of the field. Baker Mayfield ranked 42nd in target rate (only throwing to this area of the field 8.3% of the time) and 30th in his weighted Pro Football Focus grade*.

While the correlation between these grades and quarterback ability isn’t one for one (Top 10 players include Matt Ryan, Kirk Cousins, Joe Burrow, Josh Allen, Derek Carr, Russell Wilson, Aaron Rodgers, Patrick Mahomes, Phillip Rivers and Jared Goff, while Bottom 10 players include Mitchell Trubisky, Teddy Bridgewater, Sam Darnold, Gardner Minshew, Zach Wilson, Kyle Allen, Nick Mullens, Taylor Heinecke, Geno Smith and Ben Roethlisberger), it still tells a fairly good story.

*Weighted PFF Grade is a metric I created by taking the PFF grade assigned to each year’s throws and weighting it by the number of attempts within that year to create an approximate grade. It is the best I can do to approximate a full grade without having knowledge of their proprietary formula. 

Is Bucs Presumed Starter Truly A “Gunslinger?”

Qb Baker Mayfield Bucs

Rams QB Baker Mayfield – Photo by: USA Today

Baker Mayfield has the gunslinger moniker for better or for worse. That label evokes Ryan Fitzpatrick-like comparisons of “YOLO” balls. And to a certain degree it makes sense. He has been Top 10 in interceptions in three of his five seasons.

But if you peel back the curtain a bit more you see a quarterback who is more average than below when it comes to turnover-worthy plays. Of the 28 quarterbacks who are projected starters or high-end backups to young signal-callers with a decent sample size of NFL throws, Mayfield ranks tied for 15th with five other quarterbacks in turnover-worthy play percent.

Where his gunslinger label is more earned is in his big-time throws. Among that same group of players Baker Mayfield ranks sixth in career big-time throw rate. The names ahead of him? Russell Wilson, Aaron Rodgers, Patrick Mahomes, DeShaun Watson and Josh Allen. When you look at the difference between big-time throw rate and turnover-worthy play rate Mayfield comes out in the Top 10 at ninth overall.

You could consider the true gunslingers of the league as the players with the highest combined big-time throw and turnover-worthy play rates. Looking at that list Mayfield ranks seventh overall. So, he is a gunslinger in the sense of he is going to give you a lot of “big” throws (both positive and negative), but not in the negative sense that most have come to think of when they associate the term with Baker.

Where Do I See Baker Mayfield Landing Among The 2023 QB Landscape?

Isolating a player’s actual play from their situation is very difficult. In the ultimate team sport, trying to grade a single player is the ultimate frontier of player evaluation. This is why I am such a staunch defender of Pro Football Focus, a site that puts its formulaic process out there for all to see. And doing so for quarterbacks in particular is even more difficult because their play is so dependent upon their play-callers and surrounding talent.

But I’ll give it a shot. Now knowing that Baker Mayfield is a big-armed, slightly inaccurate gunslinger who doesn’t put the ball in harm’s way as much as one might think, and one who will take sacks at an extremely high rate, I foresee a guy who is going to rank around 15th-20th in the NFL this season. When you add in the context of a familiar system that he has had success in and high-end playmakers, but also a questionable line, a rookie offensive play-caller and a conservative head coach I think that adjusts his overall production down a little to 17th-23rd overall.

But the real key here comes back to that variance I wrote about earlier. This aggregate rating will come within the context of streaky play. There will be four-game sample sizes where Mayfield will look like he has figured it all out and play at peaks that rival Josh Allen, while his low-end play will look like that of Mike Glennon. It will all come down to which end of the spectrum he can sustain for longer periods of time in Tampa Bay.

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