“Overlooked” Bucs quarterback Baker Mayfield has a shot to not be overlooked any longer.
Provided the Bucs blow up (in a good way) this fall.
That’s the observation from Friend of Ira, Judy Battista of NFL.com. In putting together a list of outside-the-box favorites for an MVP season in 2025, Battista thinks the Bucs quarterback has a legit shot.
But the Bucs have to win, first.
Often overlooked, Mayfield got two fifth-place votes last season, but he deserves deeper consideration. The Buccaneers had a top-five offense in 2024, and Mayfield completed 71.4 percent of his passes for 4,500 yards and 41 touchdowns. This season, he will throw to receivers Mike Evans, Chris Godwin, Jalen McMillan and first-round pick Emeka Egbuka. Mayfield will have to overcome two things to get more serious consideration. He will have his third play-caller in as many seasons with the Buccaneers, after Liam Coen left to become the Jaguars’ head coach. (New OC Josh Grizzard was the passing game coordinator last year in Tampa.) And then there’s the fact that the Bucs play in the NFC South, considered one of the weakest divisions in the game. Thus, the schedule might not be littered with marquee matchups, though Tampa does have games against Philadelphia, Detroit and Buffalo.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. There it is again. The NFC South sucks. Joe gets it.
Notice how the national folks always have to qualify the Bucs winning ballgames. “But they play in the NFC South… ” Well, what the hell happened when the Bucs played at the current darling of the NFL, Detroit last year? Or when they hosted the eventual champion Eagles who folks can’t have enough handy Kleenex available, they talk about them so much?
But Battista is right in that it’s hard to award a quarterback an MVP honor to a team that can’t make the playoffs. And heaven forbid that team is also in the NFC South!
So if the Bucs win, say, 14 games and Mayfield plays lights out, he could win an MVP. But that coveted individual award comes on the shoulders of winning a lot of games, first.