11:55pm: Mayfield’s deal includes $110MM in new guarantees, ESPN’s Dan Graziano reports. With $40MM already guaranteed for 2026, a $150MM total guarantee number is in place on the quarterback’s third Bucs pact — one that is now official.
The full guarantee figure and future vesting dates are not yet known, but the $110MM in new guarantees is certainly a strong number for a player who was set to play out a $33.3MM-per-year deal this season. This guarantee figure should cover Mayfield’s through-2028 money, per Fox Sports’ Greg Auman, who adds the 2029 season will be nonguaranteed.
4:15pm: As it turns out, the Buccaneers will not let Baker Mayfield enter a contract year. Despite the quarterback indicating he did not plan to negotiate after the start of training camp, ESPN’s Adam Schefter and NFL.com’s Ian Rapoport report team and player have agreed on a three-year extension.
Mayfield landed a three-year, $165MM deal, Schefter reports. This will place him firmly in the $50MM-per-year club, with the $55MM AAV matching Josh Allen, Joe Burrow, Trevor Lawrence, Jordan Love and Matthew Stafford’s numbers. The contract will tie Mayfield to the Bucs through his age-34 season.
Burrow and Lawrence gave their respective teams seven years of control on their extensions — which both occurred with two years left on rookie contracts — while Love reached $55MM AAV by tying himself to the Packers for five seasons. Allen’s 2025 extension gave the Bills control over his rights through 2030. Mayfield will now be signed through the 2029 season.
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This comes out of nowhere, considering Mayfield made his timetable known and announced upon reporting to Bucs camp he would play out his three-year, $100MM contract. Tampa Bay has been regularly willing to let core players play out contract years. The team successfully re-signed a host of key cogs — from Mike Evans to Chris Godwin to Jamel Dean to Carlton Davis to Shaq Barrett to Mayfield (in 2024) — approach or hit free agency after playing out a deal. But Mayfield has shown plenty on his second Bucs contract; the team determined he was too valuable for negotiations to resume just before free agency — the club’s timeline in 2024.
At $55MM per year, Mayfield jumps in front of Jalen Hurts, Lamar Jackson, Justin Herbert, Jared Goff and Brock Purdy to match the Allen-Burrow-Lawrence-Love-Stafford quintet. This group sits behind only Patrick Mahomes and Dak Prescott in QB AAV. Although the guarantee structure will be pivotal here, this is a monster raise for Mayfield after he had hovered outside the top 15 among quarterback salaries entering the week.
Zeroing in on this contract’s full guarantees and future vesting dates will be imperative, because the Bucs have gone from reportedly being hesitant on a Mayfield deal in this range to authorizing one days before the season. Tampa Bay has now reached agreements with Vita Vea following a trade request and Mayfield after he voiced displeasure at how negotiations unfolded this offseason.
The 31-year-old QB said he felt “disrespected” by prior Bucs offers that were “not appealing whatsoever.” It was later reported Tampa Bay did eclipse $50MM per year but only on a two-year offer. Mayfield wanted a three-year commitment, according to the Tampa Bay Times’ Rick Stroud, who adds Tampa Bay’s previous proposal was for around $50MM AAV. It stands to reason the Bucs also included a better guarantee structure than they did when the sides previously broke off talks in late July.
Although Mayfield has never reached a conference championship game, his resume — and the most recent cap spike, which brought the NFL’s spending ceiling to $301.2MM — is not out of step with some of the QBs he now joins as the league’s third-highest-paid players. Lawrence and Love carried negotiating advantages of entering age-26 seasons as franchise-level hopefuls in Jacksonville and Green Bay, and those deals were finalized in 2024 — when the cap stood at $255.4MM. Hurts, Jackson, Herbert and Burrow signed their deals in 2023 (with the cap at $224.8MM).
While Mayfield being 31 separates him from most of the players in the $50MM-AAV club, Goff was entering an age-30 season when he signed his $53MM-per-year Lions accord in 2024. Stafford, now 38, soared to the NFL’s top salary tier on a one-year bump this offseason. The Rams used several void years to keep Stafford’s cap numbers low; it would make sense for the Bucs to proceed similarly.
Void year-driven structures helped the Bucs settle on Mayfield in the first place. Tom Brady’s two-year, $50MM extension included dummy years that lowered the QB legend’s cap hits, creating a $35MM dead money bill when he re-retired in 2023. The Bucs did not enter the Derek Carr or Jimmy Garoppolo markets that offseason, but they ended up with the better player — on a one-year, $4MM pact.
Mayfield was coming off a woeful stretch, struggling to play through a left shoulder injury with the Browns in 2021 and ranking last in QBR during a 2022 season split between Carolina and Los Angeles. Mayfield’s short Rams stay, after a waiver claim, undoubtedly helped him as a 2023 UFA; the former No. 1 overall pick’s bet on himself has worked wonders.
A Bucs team that has struggled to find QB continuity throughout its history has found it in an unlikely source, and this contract positions Mayfield to potentially become the first passer to be a seven-year starter in Tampa. Though, we are a ways away from that prospect coming to fruition.
Although both of Mayfield’s Pro Bowl nods (2023, 2024) came as alternates, he has settled in as a solid option for a Bucs team that lacked a smooth route to replacing Brady. Mayfield posted back-to-back 4,000-yard passing seasons in 2023 and ’24, helping his first two Bucs offensive coordinators (Dave Canales, Liam Coen) land HC jobs. Mayfield notched career-highs across the board under Coen — 4,500 yards, 41 TD passes (and 16 INTs), 71.4% completion rate, 7.9 yards per attempt — and the Bucs gave him a $30MM guarantee on his 2026 salary before the ’25 season.
Guiding the Bucs to playoff berths in each of his first two seasons, Mayfield took a step back last year. Playing through multiple injuries (including MCL and PCL sprains and an AC joint sprain in the shoulder he hurt in Cleveland), Mayfield also led a malady-ravaged Bucs offense. Tampa Bay saw most of its offensive starters miss significant time last season, and the team collapsed. The Bucs’ 8-9 finish led to OC Josh Grizzard’s firing, bringing yet another new play-caller (ex-Falcons OC Zac Robinson) for Mayfield, and Todd Bowles’ seat temperature warming. How Mayfield fares this season will play a large part in determining if the Bucs will have a new HC in 2027.
QBR did view Mayfield’s 2025 season somewhat favorably, placing him 12th (after 18th- and 13th-place finishes in 2023 and ’24), and he bristled at the notion health concerns could reduce his value. Mayfield, who initially needed to beat out Kyle Trask to win the Bucs’ starting job, has not missed a game since joining the team.
Tampa Bay tipped its hand with Mayfield by giving him 2026 guarantees a year out and hiring Robinson — the Rams’ QBs coach during Mayfield’s 2022 stopover — after the starter made a push for that move. The Bucs also faced the prospect of needing to apply the franchise tag to Mayfield next year; both sides appeared OK with that arrangement — which would have brought a roughly $50MM guarantee — but it is a moot point now.
While the Bucs have done well to re-sign players just before (or during) free agency, they have agreed to big-ticket extensions with young talents (Tristan Wirfs, Zyon McCollum, Luke Goedeke) over the past three summers. That points to Mayfield’s training camp deadline not exactly being a true negotiating endpoint, SI.com’s Albert Breer notes.
This agreement gives Mayfield considerable security after he faced another free agency bid, and it gives the Bucs a chance at rare QB continuity. The team has enjoyed success at the position — most notably from Brady and Super Bowl XXXVII starter Brad Johnson — at the position, but both were short-term fixes. Top-10 picks Vinny Testaverde and Trent Dilfer each played six seasons with the franchise, before moving on as free agents, while Jameis Winston and Doug Williams lasted five.
As Mayfield prepares to play for a seventh play-caller in six seasons, he is no longer betting on himself. The former Heisman winner’s midcareer resurgence gives him a chance to become a different type of Bucs success story, and the team will commit to the outspoken passer bouncing back once again.
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