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Baker Mayfield is who he is.
If you want the good from Bucs quarterback Baker Mayfield, you’re going to have to tolerate the not-so-good.
Mayfield plays football the way it should be played. With heart. With raw guts. Physical.
If Joe had to pinpoint maybe the best Mayfield-like game he played with the Bucs, it likely would be the win over Mike Evans’ new team, San Francisco. Down his top-three receivers, Mayfield willed the Bucs to win.
Mayfield put that Bucs offense on his back and carried it to a key win.
But with those wonderful moments, Mayfield takes a pounding. In two of his three seasons with the Bucs, Mayfield limped to the finish line.
Former Bucs Super Bowl-winning coach Bucco Bruce Arians always liked to say, “Put a quarterback in harm’s way, harm will find him.” And that’s been Mayfield in his Bucs days.
Still, he has answered the bell each week. He may not be physically 100 percent but he’s on the field when kickoff rolls around.
When Mayfield was asked yesterday after underwear football practice if, now in his 30s, he should tone down his devil-may-care approach and maybe dial things back to have a fresher body at the end of the season, and if that subject has been part of his contract negotiations with the Bucs, Mayfield slightly bristled with the question.
> “I’ve started every single game last year, for three years,” Mayfield said. “I don’t know if that should be a question.”
He’s right but Joe doesn’t think that was the question. Sure, Mayfield has started every game. But was he even close to 100 percent in all of them? No.
Remember the Bucs 9-0 win over Carolina on the road to end the 2023 season? It was a win-or-go-home game for the Bucs.
Mayfield couldn’t throw. He physically could not throw and the Bucs ran an old-school 1960s ball-control/keep-away offense by staying on the ground.
Mayfield was hurt on a cheap shot the week prior facing — who else? — the slimy Saints.
If the Bucs were playing any other team than the trash Stinking Panthers that day, Joe isn’t sure the Bucs make the playoffs.
Then there was last year. Everybody and his brother with the Bucs has told Joe how beat up Mayfield was last year. Was he 100 percent in every one of those losses? Highly unlikely.
It isn’t so much about starting. It’s about producing. It’s very difficult for any player to produce if he’s physically maimed.
But this is Mayfield, love it or leave it. You’re going to get the good (San Francisco win) and the not-so-good (Miami loss last year). You just hope you get the good Mayfield much more often than the beat-up bad.