​An NFL insider predicts the Tampa Bay Buccaneers could present quarterback Baker Mayfield with a highly attractive offer next spring, and even that may not be enough to keep him in Tampa. By most accounts, Mayfield likes it in the city. Professionally, it’s the place where he revitalized his career after Cleveland released him. Off the field, it’s where Mayfield and his wife, Emily, have started a family and are raising two children. But Mayfield’s contract runs out at the end of this season, and he would prefer a new deal before training camp so he can focus fully on playing. With fewer than three weeks remaining before the Buccaneers open camp, negotiations have yet to progress toward a settlement, and one analyst believes that if the team waits too long to present an offer he views as fair, he could walk, even if the package is excellent.
“They may propose to him more than anyone else will offer,” Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk said on PFT PM Tuesday, “and by March 2027 Baker Mayfield might accept less from another team simply to prove a point to the Buccaneers for not doing the right thing, for not offering him more, for not showing greater appreciation, ‘I’ll take less to be with a team that truly wants me and is willing to go beyond what it anticipated, even if that amount is still less than what I’d get from the Buccaneers.’”
Mayfield has a history of taking such things personally. When he was a rookie with the Browns, he stared down his former head coach, Hue Jackson, after a touchdown against the Cincinnati Bengals, where Jackson had become an assistant following a midseason firing. Almost four years after Cleveland moved on from Mayfield in favor of Deshaun Watson, Mayfield publicly expressed ill will toward his head coach in Cleveland, Kevin Stefanski, who now coaches the Atlanta Falcons in Tampa Bay’s division. Then there’s the infamous “crotch grab” incident from Mayfield’s Heisman season at Oklahoma, which some fans still recall. So Florio’s point about Mayfield’s personality lines up with the way he’s perceived.
Mayfield is currently the 16th-highest-paid quarterback in the league, earning $33.3 million per year. Some have floated the idea that his next deal could resemble the terms given to players like Jordan Love (four years, $220 million), Daniel Jones (two years, $88 million), and Jared Goff (four years, $212 million) in recent years. The silver lining for Buccaneers supporters is that another top insider isn’t as worried about Tampa Bay reaching an extension. Mike Garafolo stated earlier this week that although talks remain far apart, there is “confidence” a deal will eventually be reached.
Mayfield is 31, so depending on the length of his next contract, the place where he signs could become the team he eventually calls home for the rest of his career.