Former Buccaneers quarterback absolutely destroys Kyle Trask

Among the seemingly endless questions surrounding the Tampa Bay Buccaneers this offseason, the biggest and most interesting one is at quarterback.

When Tom Brady announced his retirement back in February, the Bucs were forced into the reality of needing both a short-term and long-term replacement. It initially seemed like they might already have the guy to fill both of those needs, as Kyle Trask was floated as the potential starter for this upcoming season.

That conversation didn't last, though.

Baker Mayfield was signed a month later when free agency opened and he's been the frontrunner to win the Bucs starting quarterback job ever since. He still needs to outperform Trask in training camp, as the role won't be handed to Mayfield unless he earns it, but that seems to be the expected outcome of their battle.

It's yet another speed bump in Trask's career, one in which he's rarely been active for games and continues to get thrown under the bus by experts around the league. Even the highest praise he's received -- being talked about as the potential starter -- was a byproduct of him being the only quarterback the Bucs had on the roster.

As he prepares for what might be the most important training camp of his career so far, Trask is not only battling Mayfield but critics who continue to lineup with each passing day.

Ex-Buccaneers quarterback says Kyle Trask 'stinks'

On his weekly show, VSiN PrimeTime, former Buccaneers quarterback Shaun King took Kyle Trask to task going as far as to declare the former second round pick 'stinks'.

In King's eyes, if Trask were any good the Bucs wouldn't have needed to sign anyone in free agency.

“Kyle Trask stinks,” King said, via JoeBucsFan. “Listen, if Kyle Trask had done anything in practice during his two years backing up Tom Brady, Tampa doesn’t go out and sign Baker Mayfield. He’d have had to have been terrible in practice. Because when you draft a quarterback second round, you want to be right. Jason Licht wants that pick to pan out.”

King is being a little harsh, but he's pretty spot on with the sentiment. One of the biggest knocks against both Trask and this current regime is the lack of preparation in having a succession plan for Tom Brady.

We all knew he wasn't going to play forever, and the fact that he played three seasons in Tampa Bay is pretty miraculous. In that time, the Bucs drafted Trask but didn't do much to develop him into an eventual heir, which has put them in their current situation.

Ideally, Trask would have been tutored by Brady and coached up to be the guy who takes over once he retired. For some reason -- or a variety of them -- that didn't happen. Now Trask is likely battling for his job against Mayfield; it's simply not the situation we thought the team should or would be in.

There's a chance Trask proves the doubters wrong, though. Mayfield was brought in partially to see if there's any sort of future here for Trask.

If Baker loses the quarterback battle this summer, the Bucs can go through a full season with Trask as the starter and see if he has what it takes to be a franchise quarterback. Losing that battle would likely tell the Bucs all they need to know about Trask and allow the front office to proceed accordingly.

There are other variants, but those seem to be the likeliest outcomes. Trask has an uphill battle ahead of him, one in which critics are pushing him back down, but he deserves consideration for the starting job until he gives a reason to believe otherwise.