Reason to smile.
Last night Joe noticed that Tristan Wirfs, Luke Goedeke, Jalen McMillan and Ko Kieft took to social media to celebrate how Bucs quarterback Baker Mayfield is locked in as your Bucs starting quarterback through 2029.
And while Mayfield, the Bucs and Mayfield’s Bucs teammates may have popped champagne bottles last night — but not too many, they’ve all got practice later this morning — many suits of NFL have-nots might be staring at the walls alone, with a glass of Pappy Van Winkle 15 on the rocks trying to figure out how the hell they are going to afford their mid-tier quarterback — if they even have one.
Suddenly, the price for Sam Darnold has skyrocketed like Micron Technology stock last winter.
Mayfield, Conor Orr of SI.com typed, had the Bucs by the balls. The Bucs are, Orr typed, a mini-version of the Steelers: Always a playoff contender since Tom Brady showed up.
But without Mayfield, [what are the Bucs](https://www.si.com/nfl/the-baker-mayfield-extension-has-destroyed-middle-class-nfl-qb-contract), Orr noted?
> That’s why Tampa Bay had no choice but to pacify Mayfield, just like it did a few weeks ago by extending the similarly disgruntled Vita Vea at the age of 31. Both players are good, don’t get me wrong. But I wonder if guaranteeing Mayfield—in terms of an EPA per play and completion percentage over expectation composite, the 14th-best quarterback between 2023 and ’25—$150 million was in the best interest of the team moving forward.
>
> In doing so, the Buccaneers fascinatingly isolated the only player left in this middle-class hive, which was once populated by both Mayfield and Geno Smith, and last year’s Super Bowl winner, Sam Darnold.
The Joe typing this here story had long been in favor of Mayfield playing out his contract the way Mayfield and the Bucs collapsed after the bye — even though Joe understood the Bucs _really_ wanted to wrap up the Mayfield negotiations and had no interest in drafting a quarterback come April.
So do we really know that the post-bye Mayfield last season won’t raise his ugly head again? Apparently, the Bucs were convinced that the second half of last season was a fluke for Mayfield and that the 2024 version of Mayfield and the pre-bye Mayfield last season are the same guy who shows up this fall and beyond.