“I’m telling you, Baker was going through a lot,” David said. “Baker had a lot of injuries that you didn’t expect a quarterback to play through. He had the oblique injury, he had the shoulder injury, he had a lot of things -- like ankle injury, knee injury -- he had a lot of stuff he was going through. The season’s over now, I can talk about it, but he had a lot of stuff that he was going through and he was really trying to push and really trying to be the player that we needed him to be. To be honest, we was doing his thing for the most part.”
Mayfield got off to a sensational start to his 2025 season, with his name being bandied around as an MVP candidate as he led the Bucs to several stirring wins, including tossing 379 yards and two touchdowns on 29-of-33 passing against the eventual Super Bowl champion Seattle Seahawks in a Week 5 win. However, after a four-sack loss against Detroit in Week 7, Mayfield never looked right, and injuries began to mount for the Bucs.
The 30-year-old sat out the second half of a blowout loss to the Los Angeles Rams in Week 12 after hurting his non-throwing shoulder, but threw every other pass in 2025 for the Bucs, despite battling through injuries.