Baker Mayfield, ‘still hungry,’ has the Bucs on the edge of another playoff berth

Americans love scoundrels, the scruffier and more battered the better. You know the type: wisecracking hotshots who sure seem unreliable but come through in the clutch. Keep your refined and elitist James Bonds, we’ll take Han Solo, Indiana Jones and Star-Lord seven days a week — and especially on Sundays.

Nobody who plays in the NFL really qualifies as a “scoundrel” — OK, almost nobody — but Baker Mayfield sure comes close. He’s witty, wily, unpredictable, incredibly talented but also incredibly erratic. He’s bounced through four teams in less than two years … and he also managed to achieve complete perfection this past weekend.

In a crucial must-win game for both teams, Mayfield’s Buccaneers beat the Green Bay Packers on Sunday, 34-20. Mayfield threw for 381 yards and four touchdowns with no interceptions, giving him a perfect passer rating of 158.3. Not bad for a dude whose entire career was in doubt earlier this year.

The Lambeau Field perfect game was yet another verse in the ongoing Ballad of Baker Mayfield, a tale that’s quickly becoming one of the most fascinating in the NFL today. The Heisman Trophy winner and former No. 1 overall pick-turned-vagabond is back in full control of a team, and somehow, against all expectations, he’s poised to lead that team to a third straight divisional title.

“I’m having fun playing football,” Mayfield said Sunday after the Green Bay win. “I wouldn’t say I’m satisfied by any means. I’ve still got football left, still got the playoffs, still hungry.”

Baker Mayfield’s NFL future was up in the air earlier this year. Now he’s on the verge of leading the Buccaneers to the playoffs. (AP Photo/Mike Roemer)

For awhile there, it sure seemed like Mayfield was destined for a perch among the NFL’s elite. The commercials where he lived in the Browns’ stadium managed to thread the needle of being funny while also being everywhere, largely because of the amiable-doofus persona Mayfield put on. Tom Brady handed his Super Bowl rings to Mayfield in the epic NFL 100 Super Bowl commercial, which at the time seemed like a torch-passing and now seems prophetic.

Though it’s tough to believe now, there was even a time when the question of who should get a contract extension — Mayfield or Baltimore’s Lamar Jackson — was a legitimate point of contention. You know what happened: Jackson got the bag, Mayfield didn’t, the Browns traded for Deshaun Watson, and that was that for Mayfield’s time in Cleveland.

He then pinballed through the NFC, starting in Carolina and failing — like so many others before him — to get much traction. Released in early December 2022, he joined the Rams and, naturally, led them on a last-minute 98-yard game-winning drive over the Raiders with only two days to prepare. Cut loose after the season, he signed a one-year deal to replace Tom Brady in Tampa Bay. No pressure there.

As a whole, the 2023 version of Tampa Bay is about as mediocre a team as you can get. After 14 games, the Bucs’ point differential is … plus-6. Only three teams are closer to the midpoint of equal points surrendered and gained. In both points scored and points allowed, Tampa Bay ranks in the mushy middle of the pack — 20th and 13th, respectively.

Tampa Bay’s offense ranks in the bottom third of the NFL in yards per game, and that’s pretty much only because of Mayfield; the Bucs’ rushing attack ranks 28th in the league. Only six defenses in the NFL surrender more yards than the Buccaneers.

And yet, thanks to the Electoral College-style math of the NFL playoff system, Tampa Bay, even at 7-7, is still in position to host a home playoff game. According to the New York Times’ playoff predictor, the Bucs have a 78 percent chance to make the playoffs, and a less-than-1 percent chance to win the Super Bowl — the only team with such good odds to get to the postseason and such terrible prospects once they arrive there.

That doesn’t much matter to Mayfield, who knows a thing or two about long odds. All you’ve got to do is be in the game, all you need is a shot.

“Sense of urgency,” Mayfield said of the team’s mindset now. “There’s no room for error … You don’t have to do anything special, just do the little things right.”

This weekend, Tampa Bay wraps its out-of-conference slate with an intrastate game against Jacksonville, followed by two division-determining games against New Orleans and Atlanta. After that come (probably) the playoffs, and then, who knows?

“God’s got a plan for me,” Mayfield told Pro Football Talk last week. “If we win games that all should take care of itself, but I’m going to enjoy this one and then and then onto the next. We control our destiny, so it’s one-game-at-a-time mentality.”

Whether he returns with Tampa Bay or finds a fifth home, he’s played well enough this season to guarantee himself another year in the NFL. And all you need is a shot.

No one’s quite sure what will happen next with Baker Mayfield, but it’ll be memorable, one way or another. You can love the scoundrels or you can hate them, but you can’t ignore them.

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