A COUPLE OF years ago, American sports broadcaster Colin Cowherd called on 28-year-old quarterback Baker Mayfield to retire from American football if he couldn’t beat out Kyle Trask for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ starting job ahead of the 2023 season.
Mayfield had joined the Tampa Bay Buccaneers from the Los Angeles Rams, where Super Bowl winner Matthew Stafford was back under center having missed the last five games of the 2022 season through injury.
Cowherd’s contention was that one-time college star Mayfield, a former Heisman Trophy winner, risked becoming a “punchline” if he remained a backup at his new club having endured a mostly torrid five years in the league to that point. The broadcaster warned Mayfield to “save [his] brand” and apply to television networks to become a college football analyst.
“You lead the NFL in interceptions since you entered it,” Cowherd added of Mayfield. “You’re not a franchise quarterback. You’ve never grown out of the chutzpah and the tough-guy thing.”
Cowherd, while a particularly vocal critic of Mayfield’s — including to his face during a 2018 interview, was hardly alone in harbouring such sentiments.
The Cleveland Browns, who selected Oklahoma QB Mayfield first overall in the 2018 NFL Draft, had given up on their man after two losing seasons, one playoff win (Cleveland’s first since 1994, the year before Mayfield was born), and a tenure-ending surgery on a torn labum.
The Browns had traded Mayfield to the Carolina Panthers for a 2024 conditional fifth-round draft pick. That fifth-round pick would have become a fourth-round pick if Mayfield played in 70% of the Panthers’ offensive snaps, which did not happen. Mayfield lost the starting spot to PJ Walker and eventually requested his release from Carolina, signing with the Rams to deputise for the injured Stafford.
Mayfield of the Panthers is tackled by former teammate, Myles Garrett of the Browns, after recovering his own fumble. Alamy Stock Photo
Alamy Stock Photo
Baker Mayfield is likely the only man on the planet who could have predicted that his five-game salvo with Los Angeles in 2022 would lay the groundwork for the coolest story in American sport in 2025.
As former Super Bowl-winning Buccaneer and football deity Tom Brady put it last Wednesday: “It’s shake and Bake time in Tampa!”
During last Sunday’s victory over the San Francisco 49ers, Mayfield joined Brady as one of two quarterbacks in Bucs history to have thrown for 10,000 yards and 75-plus touchdowns in their first 40 games with Tampa Bay.
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Mayfield has so far this season led the Bucs to a 5-1 record. He has clocked up 1,539 passing yards 158 more on the ground. He has thrown 12 touchdowns to only one interception. He boasts a passer rating of 108.5, a quarterback rating of 70.6, and he’s doing it all with the most beaten-up offence in the entire league — against San Fran, for example, he was missing his four primary passing targets and his two best offensive linemen to injury.
Mayfield is the leading contender for MVP through his six games, and only the resurgent Patrick Mahomes would be able to construct an argument against it to this point.
The Tampa Bay saviour, though, is proving himself the architect of minor miracles on a weekly basis.
The latest ‘Pure Baker’ moment occurred in the third quarter of the Bucs’ victory over the 49ers. On third down and 14, Mayfield dropped back from his side’s 40-yard line and, with Tampa’s O-line in rag order, was immediately swarmed by San Francisco’s pass rush.
Mayfield broke two tackles to avoid the sack. He looked once more to throw before putting the ball back in his holster, with all of his backup receivers tied up downfield. He rounded another would-be tackler and darted closer to first-down yardage. Confronted by a final defender, he lowered his shoulder and ploughed into contact, eventually reaching outwards with the ball to seal a fresh set of downs and keep the Bucs’ offence on the march.
The NFL’s analytical boffins later listed Mayfield’s chance of gaining a first down on the play at 3.7%. Broadcasting live on CBS, the great Jim Nantz about summed it up perfectly before such data became available.
“…But he’s not gonna have a chan– oh, yes he is!”
Mayfield reaches for a first down against the Niners. Alamy Stock Photo
Alamy Stock Photo
Nantz’s play-call may well precede Mayfield for the rest of the season, and perhaps even further beyond.
That Mayfield’s chances of becoming one of the top handful of players in the NFL were, until extremely recently, so much lower than 3.7% makes a mockery of the science of talent evaluation, which has never been exact but has rarely gone so wrong.
The Buccaneers signed Mayfield to a one-year, $4m, see-what-happens deal in 2023. It was his last chance to remain a relevant player in the NFL. At the end of 2024, Tampa tied their new franchise quarterback to a three-year, $100m extension. And his performances this year might warrant another sit-down.
The Browns, meanwhile, got the same draft compensation for trading away the 40-year-old Joe Flacco this year as they did for trading the 26-year-old Mayfield to Carolina in 2022. They’re currently 2-5 and their quarterback position is a shambles. The Panthers, who let Mayfield go after six games in 2022 (and also failed to bring out of Sam Darnold what the Vikings and Seahawks have managed to since), are a middling 4-3 team with a so-far less convincing quarterback in Bryce Young.
It begs the question as to how many Baker Mayfields are out there across all sports, watching or ignoring instead of competing because a handful of fallible people didn’t rate them at a given time.
Even Mayfield’s chutzpah — the stick with which he was once beaten — is now revered throughout the league. He shakes off huge hits, he sews it into defenders, and he has Raymond James Stadium rocking.
No ground is safe, though. Earlier this month, a playful pre-game exchange between Mayfield and a couple of home Seahawks supporters who were abusing him from above the tunnel went viral. The Seattle fans told Mayfield in no uncertain terms that he wasn’t up to much. The Buccaneers quarterback responded: “You’re going to be real fucking quiet at halftime.”
After the Bucs’ sensational 38-35 victory at Lumen Field, Mayfield remembered to give it both barrels to the supporters in question as he skipped back down the tunnel. “You still suck!” one of them retorted, but it sounded like they could no longer put their heart into it.
Mayfield was roundly praised for standing up for himself — and backing up his words — as footage later circulated.
Baker Mayfield speaking at a press conference. Alamy Stock Photo
Alamy Stock Photo
“Earlier in my career, it was ‘he’s cocky and immature,’” Mayfield said at a press conference when asked about the incident days later. “Now it’s ‘moxy’, ‘he’s a dawg.’”
The Buccaneers quarterback had the assembled media in stitches, as he often does. “Same shit, different day. As long as you play well, they’ll change the narrative. But you’ve just got to be yourself and I’ve always been like that.”
Losing quarterbacks can too soon be consigned to history. But as is the case in life, a winning quarterback gets to write it.
In the case of this most remarkable reclamation project, others have been forced to look for the Tipp-Ex.
“There’s a quality that Baker Mayfield has that I wish everyone in America had,” said Mayfield’s longtime critic, Colin Cowherd, last week.
“Not everything has to be perfect. He never plays the victim. It’s like, ‘What do I gotta work with? Alright, let’s go.’ Baker’s missing everything… and he’s willing his team to win.
“That’s what a franchise quarterback is. That’s what an MVP looks like.”
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From cast-off to leading MVP candidate, Baker Mayfield is the coolest story in American sport
A COUPLE OF years ago, American sports broadcaster Colin Cowherd called on 28-year-old quarterback Baker Mayfield to retire from American football if he couldn’t beat out Kyle Trask for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ starting job ahead of the 2023 season.
Mayfield had joined the Tampa Bay Buccaneers from the Los Angeles Rams, where Super Bowl winner Matthew Stafford was back under center having missed the last five games of the 2022 season through injury.
Cowherd’s contention was that one-time college star Mayfield, a former Heisman Trophy winner, risked becoming a “punchline” if he remained a backup at his new club having endured a mostly torrid five years in the league to that point. The broadcaster warned Mayfield to “save [his] brand” and apply to television networks to become a college football analyst.
“You lead the NFL in interceptions since you entered it,” Cowherd added of Mayfield. “You’re not a franchise quarterback. You’ve never grown out of the chutzpah and the tough-guy thing.”
Cowherd, while a particularly vocal critic of Mayfield’s — including to his face during a 2018 interview, was hardly alone in harbouring such sentiments.
The Cleveland Browns, who selected Oklahoma QB Mayfield first overall in the 2018 NFL Draft, had given up on their man after two losing seasons, one playoff win (Cleveland’s first since 1994, the year before Mayfield was born), and a tenure-ending surgery on a torn labum.
The Browns had traded Mayfield to the Carolina Panthers for a 2024 conditional fifth-round draft pick. That fifth-round pick would have become a fourth-round pick if Mayfield played in 70% of the Panthers’ offensive snaps, which did not happen. Mayfield lost the starting spot to PJ Walker and eventually requested his release from Carolina, signing with the Rams to deputise for the injured Stafford.
Baker Mayfield is likely the only man on the planet who could have predicted that his five-game salvo with Los Angeles in 2022 would lay the groundwork for the coolest story in American sport in 2025.
As former Super Bowl-winning Buccaneer and football deity Tom Brady put it last Wednesday: “It’s shake and Bake time in Tampa!”
During last Sunday’s victory over the San Francisco 49ers, Mayfield joined Brady as one of two quarterbacks in Bucs history to have thrown for 10,000 yards and 75-plus touchdowns in their first 40 games with Tampa Bay.
Mayfield has so far this season led the Bucs to a 5-1 record. He has clocked up 1,539 passing yards 158 more on the ground. He has thrown 12 touchdowns to only one interception. He boasts a passer rating of 108.5, a quarterback rating of 70.6, and he’s doing it all with the most beaten-up offence in the entire league — against San Fran, for example, he was missing his four primary passing targets and his two best offensive linemen to injury.
Mayfield is the leading contender for MVP through his six games, and only the resurgent Patrick Mahomes would be able to construct an argument against it to this point.
The Tampa Bay saviour, though, is proving himself the architect of minor miracles on a weekly basis.
The latest ‘Pure Baker’ moment occurred in the third quarter of the Bucs’ victory over the 49ers. On third down and 14, Mayfield dropped back from his side’s 40-yard line and, with Tampa’s O-line in rag order, was immediately swarmed by San Francisco’s pass rush.
Mayfield broke two tackles to avoid the sack. He looked once more to throw before putting the ball back in his holster, with all of his backup receivers tied up downfield. He rounded another would-be tackler and darted closer to first-down yardage. Confronted by a final defender, he lowered his shoulder and ploughed into contact, eventually reaching outwards with the ball to seal a fresh set of downs and keep the Bucs’ offence on the march.
The NFL’s analytical boffins later listed Mayfield’s chance of gaining a first down on the play at 3.7%. Broadcasting live on CBS, the great Jim Nantz about summed it up perfectly before such data became available.
“…But he’s not gonna have a chan– oh, yes he is!”
Nantz’s play-call may well precede Mayfield for the rest of the season, and perhaps even further beyond.
That Mayfield’s chances of becoming one of the top handful of players in the NFL were, until extremely recently, so much lower than 3.7% makes a mockery of the science of talent evaluation, which has never been exact but has rarely gone so wrong.
The Buccaneers signed Mayfield to a one-year, $4m, see-what-happens deal in 2023. It was his last chance to remain a relevant player in the NFL. At the end of 2024, Tampa tied their new franchise quarterback to a three-year, $100m extension. And his performances this year might warrant another sit-down.
The Browns, meanwhile, got the same draft compensation for trading away the 40-year-old Joe Flacco this year as they did for trading the 26-year-old Mayfield to Carolina in 2022. They’re currently 2-5 and their quarterback position is a shambles. The Panthers, who let Mayfield go after six games in 2022 (and also failed to bring out of Sam Darnold what the Vikings and Seahawks have managed to since), are a middling 4-3 team with a so-far less convincing quarterback in Bryce Young.
It begs the question as to how many Baker Mayfields are out there across all sports, watching or ignoring instead of competing because a handful of fallible people didn’t rate them at a given time.
Even Mayfield’s chutzpah — the stick with which he was once beaten — is now revered throughout the league. He shakes off huge hits, he sews it into defenders, and he has Raymond James Stadium rocking.
No ground is safe, though. Earlier this month, a playful pre-game exchange between Mayfield and a couple of home Seahawks supporters who were abusing him from above the tunnel went viral. The Seattle fans told Mayfield in no uncertain terms that he wasn’t up to much. The Buccaneers quarterback responded: “You’re going to be real fucking quiet at halftime.”
After the Bucs’ sensational 38-35 victory at Lumen Field, Mayfield remembered to give it both barrels to the supporters in question as he skipped back down the tunnel. “You still suck!” one of them retorted, but it sounded like they could no longer put their heart into it.
Mayfield was roundly praised for standing up for himself — and backing up his words — as footage later circulated.
“Earlier in my career, it was ‘he’s cocky and immature,’” Mayfield said at a press conference when asked about the incident days later. “Now it’s ‘moxy’, ‘he’s a dawg.’”
The Buccaneers quarterback had the assembled media in stitches, as he often does. “Same shit, different day. As long as you play well, they’ll change the narrative. But you’ve just got to be yourself and I’ve always been like that.”
Losing quarterbacks can too soon be consigned to history. But as is the case in life, a winning quarterback gets to write it.
In the case of this most remarkable reclamation project, others have been forced to look for the Tipp-Ex.
“There’s a quality that Baker Mayfield has that I wish everyone in America had,” said Mayfield’s longtime critic, Colin Cowherd, last week.
“Not everything has to be perfect. He never plays the victim. It’s like, ‘What do I gotta work with? Alright, let’s go.’ Baker’s missing everything… and he’s willing his team to win.
“That’s what a franchise quarterback is. That’s what an MVP looks like.”
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