{"id":395895,"date":"2026-09-10T14:48:57","date_gmt":"2026-09-10T14:48:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/395895\/"},"modified":"2026-09-10T14:48:57","modified_gmt":"2026-09-10T14:48:57","slug":"bucs-qb-baker-mayfield-new-contract-doesnt-mean-i-have-made-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/395895\/","title":{"rendered":"Bucs QB Baker Mayfield: New Contract Doesn’t Mean I Have Made It"},"content":{"rendered":"

Baker Mayfield agreed to a lucrative new contract extension<\/a> on Tuesday, a record-setting deal that keeps the Tampa Bay Buccaneers committed to their franchise quarterback through at least the 2029 season. It wasn’t until Wednesday, however, that Mayfield officially signed the deal into place, making it what General Manager Jason Licht would refer to as a “monumental day<\/a>” in franchise history during an afternoon press conference.<\/p>\n

During that press conference, Mayfield would concede that the contract providing him and his family with “life-changing money. What he would not concede was that it was player-changing money.<\/p>\n

“I still have so much to prove,” he stressed. “This isn’t, ‘I have made it.’ You know, this is life-changing money. This is stuff that for us is unbelievable. But it’s an opportunity to help the community and to continue to progress and move forward. And the main goal is still the Super Bowl, and I don’t have one of those.”<\/p>\n

Mayfield doesn’t have to prove that he is that franchise quarterback. He did so, in essence, in 2023 when he was playing on a one-year “prove-it” deal for a team that could barely find enough cap space to get him for a relative pittance. He threw for 4,044 yards and 28 touchdowns, led the Bucs to a division title and immediately established himself as the team’s emotional leader. That earned him a much more market-worthy three-year deal in 2024, of which he would have been playing the final season if not for the new extension. In his three years combined at the helm so far he has thrown for 12,237 yards and 95 touchdowns, ranking third and second in the NFL in those categories, respectively, during that span. His win-at-all-cost approach to the game, which has made him one of the NFL’s most statistically effective scramblers on third down, permeates throughout the roster.<\/p>\n

But Mayfield will eternally play with a chip on his shoulder, and as such he will never feel like he has reached the apex of what he can achieve or where he can lead his team to.<\/p>\n

“I think for me it’s not about just taking time to enjoy that,” he said. “It’s realizing that I have an unbelievable opportunity to continue to lead this building. For me, that’s working even harder and trying to push this group even harder. I don’t think there’s been a moment where I’m like, ‘OK, I’ve made it.’ For me, it’s not like that, or I probably should retire. There’s still a lot of hunger, a lot of drive, and I need to continue that way.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Baker Mayfield agreed to a lucrative new contract extension on Tuesday, a record-setting deal that keeps the Tampa…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":395896,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[9909,589,135,137,136,156864],"class_list":["post-395895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-baker-mayfield","tag-featured","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news","tag-week-1-2026-bengals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=395895"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395895\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/395896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}