Baker Mayfield said he felt disrespected and undervalued by the contract offers that came from the Buccaneers this offseason, so the quarterback is now set to play out the final year of his current deal.
Mayfield also said that he wasn’t interested in continuing to negotiate when he got to training camp this summer, which sets up a lot of possible ways for things to go between now and the start of the 2027 season. During an interview on WFLA during Friday night’s preseason game, General Manager Jason Licht said he thinks that the end result of whatever happens in the coming months will be Mayfield in a Bucs uniform.
“I’m very optimistic about it,” Licht said, via Jenna Laine of ESPN.com. “He wants to play. He wants to prove to us that he is the franchise quarterback that we said that he was. So, we’ll just have to see how it plays out. I’ll never close the door on anything in the short term, but right now, he’s focused on football.”
The Bucs have the franchise tag at their disposal, so there’s little chance of Mayfield simply walking away off of a stellar season. Anything short of that opens up more possibilities that would make it a bit harder to share certainty about what the future will bring in Tampa.
