Ryan Clark is not buying all the Baker Mayfield hype in Tampa Bay, and that’s not the kind of message Buccaneers fans want to hear while contract talks loom.
A lot of people in Tampa Bay are already locked in on Mayfield as the franchise quarterback and are ready to see the Buccaneers hand him a big extension before the 2026 NFL regular season arrives. But outside the building, the view is far less settled. Mayfield has always been a polarizing figure, and that reputation followed him through Cleveland and Carolina before he landed with the Bucs.
Clark, the former Pittsburgh Steelers safety turned ESPN analyst, added his name to the list of skeptics. Speaking on the Mina Kimes Show, via Joe Bucs Fan, he said he noticed troubling signs from Mayfield late in the 2025 NFL regular season.
"When you watch the Bucs, especially late in the season, you get one of those feelings about their quarterback where you’re like, ‘We saw some things from Baker [Mayfield] that make us nervous that we thought were no longer part of his game," said Clark.
That kind of critique is going to rub plenty of Buccaneers fans the wrong way, especially with Mayfield on track to become a very expensive quarterback. Still, Clark’s point lands because it points back to the back end of Tampa Bay’s 2025 season, where Mayfield’s play started to raise uncomfortable questions.
The concern is familiar. His season had echoes of the rough finish he had with the Cleveland Browns, when he was hurt, struggled, and unraveled before Cleveland moved on. The issues that have followed him before were back in the conversation: trying to do too much, inconsistency with accuracy, getting in his own head when adversity hits, and not protecting the football.
If those problems show up again, the Bucs may end up looking back at the second half of 2025 as the stretch where the warning signs were already there.
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