Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Baker Mayfield revitalized his career in 2023 and played some pretty good football for the Bucs. But the grind never stops in the NFL, and there's always more to be improved upon.
The Bucs would likely be quite satisfied if Mayfield repeated last year's performance, but there are a few areas where he can improve for 2024. We took a look at a few places he would benefit from working on before the upcoming season below:
Hitting the deep ball
Last season, Mayfield completed just 31% of his deep ball throws, per PFF. That ranks 33rd in the league of quarterbacks with at least 20 deep ball attempts, right below Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes — and while that sounds nice, Mayfield threw a deep ball 84 times, the second most of anyone in the league with those parameters behind Jordan Love's 90 attempts.
Plays like this one with Baker Mayfield and Trey Palmer were all too common in the first half of the season, and while it got slightly better down the stretch, it's still a big question mark heading into the 2024 season.
Mayfield himself has attributed this to inconsistent footwork, and that's a big part of the story. Being accurate on deep throws requires a lot to go right mechanically, and that's still an aspect Mayfield has to improve on. Players like Mike Evans and Trey Palmer could certainly benefit from a more accurate Baker Mayfield in this regard, so hopefully he'll be able to get back on track with his deep ball in the 2024 season.
Avoiding balls batted down
Baker Mayfield had 17 footballs batted down at the line of scrimmage in 2023, per PFF, the most of his career. But it wasn't an outlier year, unfortunately — Mayfield has had 10 or more footballs batted down at the line in the last five years of his career.
As Mayfield himself has mentioned, it isn't just height that causes this. It doesn't explicitly help him, as Mayfield is shorter than a lot of NFL quarterbacks in the league, but it's also measuring whether or not a throwing lane has opened or closed in conjunction to the route that the receiver is running. This is something Mayfield seemed to particularly struggle with last year, and for his entire career, for that matter.
This one is probably hard to fix immediately, and the prognosis isn't looking good given how common it is for the rest of his career. but it'll be an important one to fix if Mayfield truly wants to become a great quarterback in the NFL.
Avoiding sacks
There were moments where Mayfield seemed to exhibit some wizardly skills in moving out of the pocket and avoid taking a sack, but it masked a bigger issue. Mayfield was sacked the sixth-most of any quarterback in the NFL last season, eating 40 of them — and while a part of this stat is offensive line play, another part is always on the quarterback.
Mayfield's occasional indecisiveness and disdain for throwing the football away caused him to eat far more sacks than he should have, and that's something that has to be fixed. Part of that could certainly be confidence in the offensive line, and with additions to the interior in Graham Barton, Ben Bredeson and Sua Opeta, that could increase — on the flip side, it might make him hold on to the ball even longer, and that isn't what we're looking for.
Mayfield simply has to be more decisive with his throws and get the ball out as quick as he can next year. Otherwise, those offensive stalls the Buccaneers occasionally experienced at stretches in the season could continue next year.
