Baker Mayfield wasn’t doing a new contract with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers once training camp began – until he did.
He was headed to free agency after this season – until he wasn’t.
Funny how money has a way of changing things from one month to the next in the NFL.
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Mayfield has agreed to a three-year contract extension with the Bucs worth $165 million, OutKick has confirmed. The Bucs confirmed Mayfield isn’t going anywhere.
The $55 million the quarterback will get on an annual average basis ties Mayfield with Joe Burrow, Josh Allen, Jordan Love, Trevor Lawrence and Matthew Stafford as the league’s third-highest paid QBs.
Whether you think Mayfield should be in the same salary stratosphere as Burrow, Allen and last year’s MVP is not the point.
The Bucs think so.
They moved much closer to Mayfield’s negotiating position in the past week or so and that’s the reason they’ve locked up the player who has thrown 95 TD passes in 51 starts for them.
A reminder: This wasn’t initially headed in this direction.
The Bucs and their starting quarterback were at odds when training camp opened in July. The team had offered Mayfield a contract extension and he didn’t believe it rewarded him to the extent he believed himself worth.
That led Mayfield to talk about a self-imposed training camp deadline for getting a new deal as being seemingly written in cement. It also led him to openly discuss betting on himself and the possibility of hitting free agency after the season.
There were wide-ranging pundit narratives that Mayfield plays better angry and we were about to see that this season.
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That lasted a couple of days.
Mayfield’s ire faded when the Bucs ignored the deadline and came back for more negotiations.
It outright disappeared when they offered him a deal that will keep him with the team and in a region he and his family like.
At a salary he obviously saw as more inviting than standing on negotiating deadlines and threats of 2027 free agency.
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