Todd Bowles knows Baker Mayfield has to be better at taking care of the football for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to win.
The Buccaneers lost a heartbreaker, 27-24, against the Chicago Bears on Sunday Night Football. While the loss stings, the Buccaneers did fight back from trailing the entire night to tie it up at 24-all late in the fourth quarter. However, one of the key sequences in the loss came when Baker Mayfield threw an interception that Tampa Bay returned for a 67-yard touchdown after Tampa Bay had just forced Caleb Williams' fourth interception on the previous drive.
It was Mayfield's second pick-six loss this season, and it capped a night in which the two-time Pro Bowl quarterback threw two interceptions and threw zero touchdowns.
Bowles
addressed Mayfield's major error after the game:
"He had his mind made up," said Bowles after the game. "Probably should have thrown it somewhere else. Obviously, it's easy to say in hindsight, but you know we don't like turnovers. We've been doing a good job of not turning it over. We can't turn it over. He knows that. He understands that."
Mayfield hasn't turned the ball over since returning over the past two games, but those were also games where he was asked to throw only 14 times. The running game dominated those two games, while this one required more of a team effort.
Mayfield threw for 243 passing yards in this one, which is promising, as the Buccaneers at least showed they can move the ball through the air.
"Like I said, it's going to take everybody," said Bowles on the key for the Buccaneers to win games moving forward. "We're not going to be able to run the ball and win ball games. We're going to have to throw. We're going to have to catch it. I thought we dropped some easy balls early on as well that contributed to a lot of things. But we kind of chipped our way and got forward our way back into the ball game. And everybody's got to contribute.
"I thought the field position of special teams, I thought they won that," Bowles continued. "He was returning the ball pretty good. They were starting with pretty good field position there, so that was a problem. Defense, we started slow the first two series. I mean, they got five turnovers. To their credit, they came back and played. Offense fought back and cashed it in, but we got to do more. We got to make less mistakes."
This article originally appeared on Bucs Wire: Todd Bowles doesn't hold back on Baker Mayfield's pick-six in loss to Bears
