NFL coach trashes Baker Mayfield and gives Buccaneers free bulletin board material

We've reached the point in the offseason where nameless, faceless coaches are starting to trash talk players around the league.

Football is officially back, baby!

NFL rosters were cut down to 53 players on Tuesday, the final administrative step before the ramp-up to Week 1 can begin. Practice squads are being filled out as well, but so are bulletin boards in locker rooms, eager to prove doubters wrong.

Perhaps no starting quarterback has more doubters right now than Tampa Bay Buccaneers starter Baker Mayfield. There are plenty of questions around every quarterback in the league, but only Baker signed a $100 million contract after a bounce-back season that came after years of toiling away as a potential bust.

Baker revived his career in Tampa Bay last year, setting a few career highs and earning a trip to the Pro Bowl. He was narrowly defeated in Comeback Player of the Year voting and has secured his place as a key piece of the Bucs' future.

As excited as fans are to see if he can help run things back, not everyone is impressed.

Anonymous NFL coach trashes Baker Mayfield: "He doesn't scare me"

The Athletic's Mark Sando talked to various coaches around the NFL as he put together his pre-Week 1 quarterback tiers, and the response to Baker Mayfield was mixed.

An anonymous defensive coordinator gave some backhanded praise of Baker, noting that he's a fine system quarterback but not someone who scares opposing players. It wasn't all negative, but it's hard not to read into that part of the quote or let it color the rest of the feedback's tone.

"He can sling it," the coordinator said via Sando. "If he is coached well and he feels good, he is a good system quarterback. He can get rolling and make some plays. He doesn't scare me. With some of those 2's, you are like, 'Oh, s--t, I have to do something to stop them.' I don't feel that with Baker. He's a guy where we can play our stuff and be fine."

Baker at least scares this coach enough to not put a name behind his trash talk.

This has ben Baker's reputation throughout his career, but it wasn't the guy we saw with the Bucs last year. That was an evolved form of the former No. 1 overall pick, and we saw things out of Baker that not only helped the team win but encouraged the culture to churn over from the Tom Brady era.

Baker's identity was imprinted on the team almost as soon as he was handed the keys to the starting job, and it only got deeper from there. Tristan Wirfs noted numerous times throughout the year how what Baker brought was different from Brady and was far mroe relatable in the locker room. His leadership often went unseen when looking strictly at game film, but was a major reason why the Bucs wanted to bring him back this offseason.

There are higher expectations this year for Tampa Bay, which puts even more pressure on the team to dispel notions that the team or its quarterback are nothing more than average. Time will tell which side of the argument the Bucs end up on, but right now Baker Mayfield is not a guy anyone should be betting again.

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