It took a while for the Buccaneers offense to get going against the Vikings in Week One, but they were able to score a pair of touchdowns on either side of halftime that pushed them to a 20-17 road win.
Bucs running back Rachaad White said this week that a key to the turnaround was quarterback Baker Mayfield’s ability to suss out what the Vikings were doing on defense. White said Mayfield that he “got all these signals” while letting the rest of the offense to know what tells to look for on the Vikings’ side of the ball.
On Wednesday, Mayfield quipped that he’s not an Astros fan in reference to the baseball team’s sign-stealing scandal while admitting that picking up on what Minnesota was doing helped “quite a bit.”
“When it comes down to that, you’re always trying to find tendencies of the defense,” Mayfield said Wednesday. “Just those in-game adjustments, you’re trying to find those tendencies and sometimes it’s a little different than others. That’s why, like I said post-game, it was a chess match there in the first half with some stall-out drives. They did a very, very good job and I can’t credit [Vikings defensive coordinator] Brian Flores enough for how they were schemed up against us. It took us a little bit to adjust but you try to find every advantage possible.”
On top of giving the Bucs an advantage, talking up Mayfield’s ability to decipher defensive signals gives upcoming opponents something else to think about as they prepare to face Tampa in the coming weeks.
