Baker Mayfield puts Bucs’ loss to Lions on himself, offense

TAMPA — Baker Mayfield wore it. He wore the Bucs’ 20-6 loss to the Lions with his words and wounds.

Both were still stinging when the quarterback stood on the post-game podium Sunday after playing his worst game since signing with the team in March.

Mayfield had a gash on the top of his right index finger that was stitched up after gushing blood during the game. His left hand was sore and swollen after it took a hit from a Detroit facemask, but X-rays were negative. He had turf burns from being splattered on his way out of bounds and skidding on a sideline carpet.

But nothing caused Mayfield more discomfort than the poor offensive performance the Bucs put on display against the Lions.

Mayfield went 19 of 37 passing for 206 yards with zero touchdowns and an interception. The best third-down passer in the NFL saw his team go 2-of-12 on third down Sunday.

His receivers dropped passes and he missed two deep shots to rookie Trey Palmer that would have been walk-into-the-end zone touchdowns.

He had Mike Evans open for what may have become another touchdown but the pass was deflected at the line and intercepted, setting up the Lions’ first score.

“We sucked today,” Mayfield said. “I sucked today. We sucked today. It was awful from the get-go. Can’t play like that. We didn’t start fast. We didn’t pick it up in the middle and we didn’t finish strong. We have to be better.”

For as good as the Bucs felt about Mayfield and new offensive coordinator Dave Canales after a 3-1 start entering the bye week, there’s an undeniable fact highlighted by lopsided losses to the top NFC teams such as Philadelphia (5-1) and Detroit (5-1) that they’re not a top-rung NFC team.

The Bucs offense isn’t holding up its end of the bargain, averaging only 18 points per game. That’s the kind of production that prompted Tom Brady to retire and previous offensive coordinator Byron Leftwich to be fired.

After the game, Mayfield addressed how he and the offense need to stop making the defense do all the heavy lifting.

Without the defense creating turnovers — they had zero takeaways against the Lions — the Bucs struggle to score.

“At a certain point, we’ve got to get pissed off as an offense,” Mayfield said. “We should be putting a lot of points up on the board. It’s got to be — we talk about the standard, about winning around here — but offensively, we need to look at it in the smaller picture and we should be putting up a lot more points than we have been, so we need to be accountable for that.

“It starts with me and we’ll get it going.”

It’s not that the defense didn’t have its fingerprints on Sunday’s loss.

Lions quarterback Jared Goff carved the Bucs up for 353 yards passing, including touchdown passes of 27 yards to Amon-Ra St. Brown and 45 yards to Jameson Williams.

What’s more, Goff went 10-of-14 for 166 yards and two touchdowns on third down. After opening the game 1-for-5 on third down, the Lions went 8-for-11 the rest of the way.

Yet they led only 10-6 until 3:19 remained in the third quarter.

Mayfield was victimized by drops from Rachaad White and Mike Evans, who caught only four of 10 targets for 49 yards. White couldn’t corral a pass from Mayfield on the first series of the game.

Even so, Mayfield just overthrew Palmer twice after Palmer had gotten well behind the Lions defense.

“Not only those two to Trey, the tipped interception,” Mayfield said. “Mike is going to score a touchdown. Just one of those days where I had everything we wanted but didn’t hit it, didn’t execute.”

Fortunately for the Bucs, the entire NFC South lost their games Sunday, and Tampa Bay maintained a half-game lead heading into next week’s important division game with the Falcons at Raymond James Stadium.

As for Mayfield’s injuries? They should heal fast enough for him to play.

“They hit my hand a couple times. It was an annoying pass rush,” he said of the Lions. “They wouldn’t get any sacks but just hit home and let their presence be known so they did a real good job.”

He held up in right index finger. “Yeah, it looks pretty good,” he said.

And the left hand? “X-rays were good,” he said. “It just hurts. I took a nice little facemask to the hand, so it feels good.”

Of course, nothing hurt Mayfield worse than the performance of the offense.

“I’ll fix my mistakes. I’ll fix what I was doing wrong and we’ll get it going,” he said. “There’s zero excuse for our offense to come out and lay an egg like that. It was horrible.”

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