Buccaneers' Kyle Trask talks relationship with Baker Mayfield

Kyle Trask of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers sounds unbothered by the fact he's seemingly already trailing Baker Mayfield in the team's quarterback competition. 

"I think the whole quarterback room has built a great relationship," Trask told reporters about working alongside Mayfield and veteran John Wolford, per Myles Simmons of Pro Football Talk. "Just like I was talking about earlier with transparency of communication — it’s also huge in a quarterback room. You want to be able to lean on each other and bounce ideas off of each other. That’s the key to a great quarterback room is having a lot of different ideas whether from past offenses or different looks that you’ve had in the past. I think that our quarterback room is building a great relationship right now." 

Trask entered the NFL as a 2021 second-round draft pick and spent his first two pro seasons buried on the Tampa Bay depth chart beneath future Hall of Famer Tom Brady and Blaine Gabbert. In total, Trask attempted a total of nine regular-season passes across two campaigns.

New Buccaneers offensive coordinator Dave Canales and senior advisor Bruce Arians appear ready to hand the keys to the team's offense over to Mayfield, and just about every report indicates the first pick from the 2018 draft is already unofficially atop the depth chart ahead of training camp. Trask, meanwhile, is doing all he can to focus on learning Canales' offense while also trying to keep up with Mayfield. 

"The progress is coming along little by little every day and I’m feeling very comfortable grabbing the gist of the offense," Trask added. "It’s been such a huge leap for me, in my opinion, just to get all of the concepts down and playing with more confidence. Mistakes are going to happen – that’s part of football. It’s our job as quarterbacks to limit those mistakes and give our team the best chance to win in the end." 

Retired quarterback and current NFL Network personality David Carr recently said he's convinced that "Trask is going to have to do something extraordinary" to win the starting job ahead of the season opener at the Minnesota Vikings on Sept. 10. The harsh truth of the matter is that Trask will largely look like a wasted draft pick if he is second on the depth chart by that Week 1 matchup.