Baker Mayfield: the walk-on who refused to become Cleveland’s cautionary tale

Baker Mayfield

Photo: Erik Drost / CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Born	April 14, 1995 Austin
Occupation	Footballer
Honours	NFC South ×4 · State Championship
Individual awards	Burlsworth Trophy · The Sporting News College Football Player of the Year · Heisman Trophy

The week Baker Mayfield signed a three-year, $165 million extension with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, he was also preparing to face the Cleveland Browns for only the second time since they traded him away. Cleveland never made it to a Super Bowl with him. Tampa has won four consecutive division titles. Whatever the NFL concluded about Baker Mayfield in 2022, he has since concluded something different.

He was born in Austin, Texas, and grew up in households that moved often. His father, a private equity consultant, faced financial difficulties during Baker’s high school years, yet the family stayed in Austin long enough for him to lead Lake Travis High School to a state championship. When he arrived at Texas Tech as a walk-on — no scholarship offer, no guaranteed spot — he won the starting job anyway. When Texas Tech went a different direction, he walked on at Oklahoma. The roster listing described him as a walk-on twice. The Heisman voters would eventually describe him as the best college player in the country.

At Oklahoma, Mayfield became something the sport had never officially produced before: the first Heisman Trophy winner to have begun his college career without a scholarship. He finished 2017 with 4,627 passing yards, 43 touchdowns, and a passing efficiency rating that set the FBS record. The award came with a clean narrative — the underdog made good, the oversized confidence finally validated — and it was that narrative as much as the production that sent him to the top of the 2018 NFL Draft.

The Cleveland Browns selected him first overall. His rookie year still registers in the record books: 27 passing touchdowns, the most by an NFL rookie at the time. The city’s relationship with the quarterback was immediate and combustible — Cleveland had been starving for that kind of energy, and Mayfield brought exactly as much of it as you could want. The 2020 season was the peak: 30 touchdowns, an 11-5 record, and a playoff victory over the Pittsburgh Steelers that was Cleveland’s first postseason win since 1994. For a franchise that had processed quarterback after quarterback through the turnstile for two decades, he appeared to be the answer.

He wasn’t. Or the franchise wasn’t. The interpretation depends on the season you cite. Mayfield played the 2021 season with a partially torn labrum and finished with career-low numbers in nearly every category. The Browns had already begun exploring the possibility of replacing him before the season ended. When Cleveland signed Deshaun Watson in March 2022 to a fully guaranteed $230 million deal — the richest contract in NFL history at the time — Mayfield was traded to the Carolina Panthers. He was not given the courtesy of a call.

The Panthers released him in December. He was claimed off waivers by the Los Angeles Rams the following day, which is about as complete a description of how far a first-overall pick can fall in eleven months. Five days later, in his second start for Los Angeles, Mayfield drove the Rams 98 yards in the final 105 seconds to beat the Las Vegas Raiders. It was the kind of moment the NFL uses to make its own mythology: the improbable comeback drive, the cast-off quarterback who seized the unlikely stage. For Mayfield, it was something more specific — proof that the problem had never been the arm.

The inconsistency question did not disappear in Tampa Bay. The 2024 season produced the most vivid version of his contradictions: career highs in completions, yards, touchdowns (41), and passer rating (106.8), alongside career highs in interceptions (tied NFL-high 16) and fumbles (13). Mayfield’s ceiling and his floor are farther apart than those of any other quarterback in his contract tier. His supporters cite the playoff passer rating of 105.9, the best in NFL history among quarterbacks with 150 or more attempts. His critics cite the games where the arm that works beautifully in September appears to have no memory of that in December. The new contract bets, collectively, that the ceiling wins.

Tampa Bay had signed him in early 2023 to a one-year, $4 million deal — a figure commensurate with his market value at the time, which is to say: nobody else had bid higher. What followed was a Pro Bowl season, a division title, and the kind of quarterback play that made the entire preceding season with Carolina feel like an administrative error. The Buccaneers won four consecutive NFC South championships. In 2024, he produced the best statistical season of his career. By September 2026, the franchise had seen enough: the three-year, $165 million extension placed him alongside Joe Burrow and Jordan Love in the $55 million-per-year tier.

Off the field, Mayfield and his wife Emily Wilkinson — they married in 2019 — established the Baker & Emily Mayfield Walk-on Scholarship at Oklahoma, a named acknowledgment that the path he took did not have to be as difficult as it was. They have two children. Mayfield appeared in the 2026 Netflix documentary series Quarterback, part of a multi-athlete behind-the-scenes series on an NFL season. He is an investor in OKC Energy FC, the USL Championship soccer club in his home state.

The Buccaneers began the 2026 season 0-2, with Mayfield throwing three fumbles in a loss to the Cincinnati Bengals. The contract is now $165 million in the future. He has been in this position before — the quarterback who needs to prove something to the people who already paid to believe in him. The two previous times he was in that position, he lost the argument and the job. The third time is different.

Tags: sports, athletes, NFL, quarterbacks, American football, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Baker Mayfield, Cleveland Browns