Baker Mayfield’s MVP-caliber start to 2025 hit a speed major bump midway through the season and spiraled out of control as the Tampa Bay Buccaneers careened to an 8-9 finish following a 5-1 start.
Recently retired Bucs linebacker Lavonte David joined The Arena podcast and revealed just how much pain Mayfield played through.
“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.”
Mayfield got off to a sensational start to his 2025 season, with his name being bandied around as an MVP candidate as he led the Bucs to several stirring wins, including tossing 379 yards and 2 TDs on 29-of-33 passing against the eventual Super Bowl champion Seattle Seahawks in a Week 5 win. However, after a four-sack loss against Detroit in Week 7, Mayfield never looked right, and injuries began to mount for the Bucs.
The 30-year-old sat out the second half of a blowout loss to the Los Angeles Rams in Week 12 after hurting his non-throwing shoulder, but threw every other pass in 2025 for the Bucs, despite battling through injuries.
David believes the Bucs offensive struggles down the stretch were a combination of players missing time, including star Mike Evans, which thrust young players into key roles, and the injuries that hindered the QB’s ability to make plays off script, which had highlighted his early-season success.
“But you miss your top two targets in Mike (Evans) and Chris (Godwin) and you’re playing with a bunch of rookies,” David said. “You’re playing with Emeka (Egbuka), even though he had a solid year, he became the No. 1 guy and people were keying on him, people were locking in on him and he probably didn’t know how to handle that. You’ve got Tez Jonhson, you’ve got J-Mac (Jalen McMillan) coming back from injury. We were missing key guys. And then our offensive line was banged up. We had a revolving door with the offensive line all year, so it’s tough for him to deal with those kinds of things.
“I don’t think Baker should’ve got the blame at all because years prior, he’s playing lights out. Early in the season, he’s playing lights out. He put up 38 points on the eventual Super Bowl champions. I would never blame Bake for that.”
Mayfield enters the final year of his 3-year, $100 million contract in Tampa in 2024. After playing for relatively cheap, the soon-to-be 31-year-old is in line for a pay raise, and could potentially leap into the $50-million-per-year group. The question is whether the Bucs believe — as David obviously does — the 2025 struggles were a blip on the radar caused by injury and not a sign of future outcomes.
