The Kyle Trask Era – JoeBucsFan.com – Tampa Bay Bucs Blog, Buccaneers News

Bucs QB Kyle Trask.

It seems a bit odd that the Bucs would turn to a guy who in two years has a grand total of three completions to his resume. Alas, it seems that’s what the Bucs will do.

Welcome to the Kyle Trask Era.

Joe’s good friend Mike Tanier of Football Outsiders is trying to piece together what this means.

Frankly, good for them. General manager Jason Licht fired all the Glazer cannons, won a Super Bowl, competed for another, watched the Brady mini-era roll to a stop, and now looks ready to unapologetically start over. The Bucs might as well kick the tires on Trask and some other youngster while they eat money. And Trask will at least get the benefit of a solid supporting cast.

This is true. Rarely does a young quarterback get to play with guys like Mike Evans, Chris Godwin, Ryan Jensen, Tristan Wirfs and possibly Playoff Lenny. That’s a good supporting cast. If Trask demonstrated progress, then he ought to continue it playing with those guys.

And now the discouraging news: Trask is 72-of-122 for 769 yards, two touchdowns, four interceptions, 13 sacks, a 59.0% completion rate, 6.3 yards per attempt, and a 9.6% sack rate over two preseasons of extensive action. Preseason stats are essentially gibberish, but there’s nothing in that stat line to inspire much hope, and the sack rate (as well as the fact that Trask could not supplant Blaine Gabbert on a cap-tight team in 2022) are worrisome.

There is certainly that. Last year at the start of training camp, Blaine Gabbert was maybe a step ahead of Trask. After the first week, Gabbert began to pull away. After the third week, the question was not if Trask could be the No. 2 backup, it was if he could beat out Ryan Griffin for No. 3.

Now there is speculation the Bucs might bring in scatterbrain Drew Lock.

“That sounds a little tea-leafy—why would Canales want to work with someone who lost a quarterback competition on his watch last year?” Tanier asked.

Exactly. Off the top of Joe’s head, Joe can only think of one quarterback who lost two quarterback battles with two different teams and did anything with his third team. That was Rich Gannon.

If the Bucs bring in Lock, that’s like when lousy Lovie Smith turned to Stewart McClown. This dude couldn’t beat out Jason Campbell with the Bears and Lovie thought he was the guy to lead the Bucs to the Super Bowl? (Lovie was as clueless about player evaluation as Joe has ever seen an NFL head coach be.)

Lock lost a preseason battle in Seattle to Geno Smith. In Denver, Lock lost his starting gig to Jeff Driskel. C’mon now.

If Trask takes the bull by the horns and shows he’s an NFL quarterback, great. If not, as Ryan Clark of BSPN said, #CollaspeForCaleb is on!

(FYI, Joe is more confident that Canales can help Trask than failed offensive coordinator Byron Leftwich.)