![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/mayfield-sling.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nBaker Mayfield walks back to the Bucs\u2019 bench in the third quarter from the locker room in Los Angeles Sunday night.<\/p>\n
Good luck explaining this one away.<\/p>\n
Bucs coach Todd Bowles has had a string of \u201cWhat was he thinking?\u201d moments since the bye week.<\/p>\n
Tonight, he had a big one. And Joe doesn\u2019t think there is a proper, logical answer.<\/p>\n
Late in the second quarter down 21, Bowles decided to go for it on fourth down from the Bucs-28. It failed.<\/p>\n
Mind you, Bowles, with the game on the line and his running game dominating Buffalo, failed one week ago to go for a first down in the fourth quarter down five with the ball on the Bucs-39. It cost Tampa Bay the game because the defense was a sieve and Buffalo scored the game-winning touchdown.<\/p>\n
So since the Bucs coach decided to wave the white flag in the second quarter, why then leave your banged-up franchise quarterback in the game? It was over \u2014 otherwise you wouldn\u2019t have called such a dumb stunt.\u00a0And then you make things significantly worse by leaving Baker Mayfield in the game, who was already playing with a banged-up left shoulder.<\/p>\n
Sure as s(p)it stinks, Mayfield, on the final play of the half, fell on that hurt shoulder and the next time Bucs fans saw him, he was walking out of the tunnel to the Bucs\u2019 bench with his left arm in a sling.<\/p>\n
Happy?<\/p>\n
Or perhaps leaving a hurt Mayfield in the game was one of those good ol\u2019 fashioned \u201ccommunication\u201d issues, eh?<\/p>\n
In some circles, that\u2019s known as coaching malpractice.<\/p>\n
In simple terms, that was as irresponsible as you can get.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Coaching Malpractice November 23rd, 2025 Baker Mayfield walks back to the Bucs\u2019 bench in the third quarter from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":310812,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[5961,5960,349,99,1824],"class_list":{"0":"post-310811","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-bucs-message-boards","9":"tag-bucs-news","10":"tag-nfl","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-tampa-bay-buccaneers"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=310811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310811\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/310812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}