Baker Mayfield woke up feeling dangerous, and that’s great for the Buccaneers

After a breakthrough 2023 in Tampa Bay, the Buccaneers rewarded QB Baker Mayfield with a three-year, $100 million contract that would ensure his role as the starting QB for the immediate future. The deal was a rarity for Mayfield, who hasn’t had much stability since entering the NFL with the Cleveland Browns. Tampa made a bet on his confident, yet calculated play that got the Bucs to the second round of the playoffs, and while they had to replace OC Dave Canales with Liam Coen, the results were expected to be the same.

On Sunday, the results weren’t the same. They were better. Mayfield went 24-for-30 for 289 yards and four touchdowns in the opening to his encore performance as the Bucs dropped 37 points in a win over the Washington Commanders. After going back and watching Mayfield’s performance on film, it shows a QB who is building on his 2023 with confident passing and a guy who was on an absolute HEATER on Sunday.

What I was curious about the most with the Bucs and Mayfield was the ability to continue peppering passes and concepts outside the hashes without making him throw over the middle too much. Mayfield has an incredibly strong arm—he can hit every throw out by the sidelines, and there’s less to read in that situation for him rather than the muddied mess that is middle of the field passing. So far, under Coen, that formula hasn’t changed. Of course, there’s the caveat of the Commanders potentially being the worst defense in the NFL, but Mayfield and the Buccaneers put some really nice stuff on tape.

What encouraged me the most was how Coen and the Bucs used short motion and alignments to run basic sideline concepts for Mayfield. These simplified the read and let Mayfield do what he does best, which is throw the ball really hard towards the edges. On his touchdown to Jalen McMillan, Coen uses this motion to change the coverage responsibilities of the Commanders in Cover One. At first, this is what each defender in coverage’s responsibility is:

Now, as you watch the video, you’re going to see how the responsibilities change with the motion. When McMillan goes in motion, the outside corner takes WR Chris Godwin and switches McMillan to the nickel corner. But wait, there’s more! As the play is developing, McMillan and TE Cade Otton switch their stems, meaning Otton runs outside and McMillan runs inside. All of this switching and motion crosses the wires of communication for the Commanders, and McMillan is left wide open.

This same short motion was used again, but this time with wideout Mike Evans, who I’m sure you’ve heard of. The Commanders are showing pressure, but drop into Cover Two at the snap. How that breaks down looks like this:

Now, watch what happens when Evans goes into short motion. The Bucs are running a flood concept to the right side, but with Evans going in motion he runs the out route right behind the linebacker, in line with the corner to that side. Godwin runs a route right at the linebacker, and McMillan runs a go route. The motion forces two defenders to have eyes on Evans and McMillan is left wide open. If it weren’t for pressure, this ball would’ve been housed.

The funniest part is, earlier in the game the Buccaneers ran the same concept, but this time TE Cade Otton goes in exit motion and runs the go route. The Commanders are in Cover 3, meaning that outside corner has to carry Otton vertically. The linebacker is put in a bind with Godwin below him and Evans behind him, and Mayfield layers this to Evans for a big gain.

Even without motion or anything to dress up the play, Mayfield was feeling himself on Sunday. He was firing passes to the edges of the defense, showing off his arm strength (which has never been his problem). The Bucs are running a classic bench concept, with Chris Godwin running the short out route and WR Trey Palmer running the corner route behind it. The Commanders find themself in Cover Two to that side, which means Mayfield has the simple read of throwing it where the corner isn’t. Watch how he layers this pass to Palmer. It’s a really impressive throw, one that Mayfield makes look easy.

The Bucs could’ve put up more points if they really wanted to. Mayfield missed the McMillan go route due to pressure, but on the very first drive he has McMillan on a real sweet design out of a bunch that completely loses the Commanders secondary. McMillan hauls that in and we’re looking at a 40-piece for the Bucs offense in the first game of the season.

Again, we have to add the caveat of this being the first game of the season and the Commanders potentially being horrible, but this was really impressive from Tampa Bay. Coen was building on concepts Mayfield was really confident in last year, and was able to dress it up in a sick way.

If this is what Mayfield has in store for an encore, count me in.