The Buccaneers blew a key game on Thursday night. After the loss to the Falcons, quarterback Baker Mayfield accepted the blame for it.
“It falls on my shoulders,” Mayfield told reporters following the 29-28 defeat. “Can’t turn the ball over, can’t have that interception. And then, just gotta hit [Emeka Egbuka] in stride on that third down. Listen, you can say what you want about being up two scores and the defense right there, but we have to be better on offense, and it comes down to how I play. And this one’s gonna haunt me. This falls on my shoulders.”
Asked whether the issue related to decision making, Mayfield was clear on what he needed to do: “Make the throws. Make the throws.”
Up eight in the fourth quarter, Mayfield threw an interception to Falcons defensive back Dee Alford.
“It wasn’t even a disguise, you know,” Mayfield said. “It’s quarters coverage. He’s playing outside leverage, which is really not what he normally does on tape. You gotta go through the reads and if it’s not there, take the damn check down. And it’s plain and simple. This one’s, like I said, it’s gotta beat me up for a little bit.”
Mayfield also was asked about coach Todd Bowles’s message to the team.
“He hit the nail on the head, saying and questioning does it mean anything to the guys?” Mayfield said. “Like, ‘Does this hurt enough for you to actually make changes. To come in, do the work that you need to do, to do the things that we need to do as a team to get better, fix these things and win ball games?’ And he repeated it, and it really is as simple as that. We have talent. Talent doesn’t get you shit though. Doing the work and executing on game days does, and that’s — we didn’t do that today. Like I said, I did not do that.”
Mayfield said it’s not an issue with preparation but execution. He also acknowledged the possibility that it’s a matter of concentration in crunch time.
“I don’t know if it’s losing focus late in games,” Mayfield said. “You know, mine was just lack of execution. But I don’t know if it’s losing focus late in games. I mean, I can’t speak for the defense, but I can speak for the offense. I can speak for myself, and that was that was just execution on my part.”
The end result is that the 7-7 Buccaneers are not happy.
“We’re pissed off,” Mayfield said. “We expected to win that game. We want to win that game. Should be pissed off. And, like I said, when you’re up two scores and your offense has a chance to put the game away, and you don’t — obviously, people are gonna blame the defense, but it’s not the defense’s fault. It’s our fault. It’s my fault. And that’s that’s how I view it, and that’s how I’m gonna handle it.”
They can still get to the playoffs, if they handle their business.
“We have to win out, and we know that,” Mayfield said. “It’s — that’s as plain and simple as it is. We put ourselves in a position to have to do that. So if guys don’t handle that the right way, then we have a much deeper issue. But I don’t believe that we have a culture issue. We’ve just got to be able to translate the stuff that we prepare, we talk about, and do on a consistent basis. We’ve got to translate it to game day.”
The next game day comes in nine days, when they face the Panthers for the first of two meetings in the final three weeks of the season, with a visit to Miami in between.
Win them all, and tonight’s outcome will become a faded memory. Fail to deliver, and the Week 15 Thursday night could be haunting a lot more people than Baker Mayfield.
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