Baker Mayfield opened the 2025 season looking like an MVP candidate, but things fell apart fast for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The team started 5-1 before collapsing to an 8-9 finish, and the momentum disappeared around midseason.
Mayfield drove several wins early on and led conversations about the league’s best quarterbacks through six weeks. Then came a four-sack beating from Detroit in Week 7, and everything changed after that.
Advertisement
MORE: NFL analyst reveals Rueben Bain Jr. stunning draft outlook
Mayfield never looked as sharp or comfortable from that point forward. Injuries mounted across the roster, and while he still put up solid numbers. 3,693 yards, 26 touchdowns, and 11 interceptions with a 90.6 passer rating in 17 games.
Lavonte David shares untold details about Baker Mayfield’s difficult season
Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Baker Mayfield
However, the production didn’t tell the full story. Recently retired NFL linebacker Lavonte David appeared on ‘The Arena‘ podcast and revealed that Mayfield played through far more pain than anyone outside the building realized.
Advertisement
“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.”
MORE: Stephon Gilmore reveals post retirement plans after historic 13-year career
Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Baker Mayfield
David acknowledged that Mayfield held things together reasonably well late in the year, especially with everything stacked against him. But he also admitted the locker room energy dropped, even while Tampa Bay stayed in the playoff race.
Advertisement
All of that context matters now because Mayfield enters the final year of his three-year, $100 million contract. He outperformed that deal, and a raise seems inevitable.
The 30-year-old could push into the $50 million per year range if the Buccaneers decide to lock him up long-term. The real question is whether Tampa Bay views the second-half struggles as injury-related noise or a sign of something deeper.
Source: Read Full Article
