NFL Trade Rumors
Buccaneers QB Baker Mayfield is no stranger to changing play-callers. His long and winding journey to start his career exposed him to a lot of change, and even now that he’s found a home in Tampa Bay, he’s going on his third play-caller in three years with the promotion of Josh Grizzard to replace Liam Coen, who replaced Dave Canales.
“Yeah, but this one’s different,” Mayfield said via ESPN’s Dan Graziano. “I’m not meeting him for the first time. He was in all the meetings last year, and it also helps going into the same system. With the run game, he’s leaning on our offensive line coaches, which — huge, keeping those guys is a huge part of the run game’s success. So he’ll be motioning guys, … but when Grizz was in Miami it was, ‘How do they get Tyreek [ Hill] to not be doubled?’ So his background is how to motion, how to get certain looks out of the defense. Our third-down stuff last year, a lot of it was Grizz. He was our third-down pass game coordinator. So we trust in that. Just having the communication of knowing him before, we don’t have to get to know each other. We can kind of just say what we’re thinking.”
The one player in training camp whom the Buccaneers can’t stop raving about is first-round WR Emeka Egbuka. The team thought highly enough of Egbuka to take him in the first round despite already having three great to solid starters. Since then, he’s done nothing but validate the pick.
“His football IQ is far beyond a guy coming out of college,” Bucs HC Todd Bowles said via ESPN’s Dan Graziano. “It shows up as far as leverage, when he’s being doubled, when he has to stop, when he has to break a route off, when he has to block somebody and then move to another gap and take the next guy. It’s just the little things that you would think you have to teach the whole way, he’s been doing the whole time.”
“Stuff you can’t teach,” Bucs QB Baker Mayfield added. “Sometimes when receivers are running through routes and the ball is somewhat high but they don’t have to jump for it, some guys leave their feet. But he never leaves the ground. He stays grounded through the catch, so the potential for explosive plays with him is huge. Just the details of his routes, too, he learns from everything, watches other guys, understands the coverages. … Some things like that you can tell a rookie but he can’t exactly take it from the practice meeting to the field immediately, might have to do it a couple of times, but Emeka does it seamlessly.”
At this rate, the conversation has gone from how the Buccaneers will find a role for Egbuka to how they’ll keep him off the field.
“He looks like he’s been in the league for 10 years,” GM Jason Licht...
