Baker Mayfield Receives Some Love From PFF fasterkora.xyz

As Pro Football Focus continues to unveil their summer positional rankings series, they have turned their heads to the most controversial position in the sport. Quarterback! This is a particularly touchy subject for Bucs fans as Baker Mayfield, while beloved within the fanbase, is not seen with the same reverence by most evaluators as well as the grading site itself.

However, by PFF’s own grading metrics, last year he earned a stellar 85.9 overall grade, good for sixth overall among qualifying quarterbacks. His 83.6 passing grade was also sixth. It would follow that his placement on the list matched, right?

Well, not so much.

But the site did move him up quite a bit from last year.

Baker Mayfield Ranks 13th Among NFL Quarterbacks

Mayfield’s fantastic 2024 season helped move him up seven spots on PFF’s list. Last year he was 20th and this year he has moved up into their “Solid Starters, but they need more help” tier. Author John Kosko noted this was his “Tier 3b”.

He wrote of Bucs quarterback, “Mayfield has pulled off a remarkable career turnaround. After bouncing back in 2023, he delivered the best season of his career in 2024, earning an 85.9 overall grade. He’ll now be working with his third offensive coordinator in three years in Tampa Bay — and his fifth since 2022 — but the struggles of 2021-2022 feel firmly in the rearview mirror. His 2024 campaign also featured one of the wildest plays of the season, completing a pass with one of the league’s top pass rushers draped all over him.”

Mayfield found a home in Tampa Bay, locking in with an offense that accents and caters to his game. Mayfield, for his part has improved his intermediate passing from his pre-Bucs’ days. And the team has embraced Mayfield’s volatile, out of structure play which has created some of the highest highs for the team.

It’s those “never give up” plays that have endeared him to the team, the fanbase and the community as a whole.

How Can Baker Mayfield Find The Next Gear?

Entering his eighth year in the NFL, there may still be more untapped potential for Baker Mayfield. I covered some of the ways that Mayfield can continue to improve from his positive play in 2024, including an adjustment in his second reaction plays that can improve his pressure to sack rate, as well as finding his once vaunted deep-ball connection.

An improvement in each of those areas could lead to positive regression in his big time throw and turnover-worthy play rates. In turn, that may also help him move up PFF’s list this time next year.

Upward Movement In Consecutive Years

Baker Mayfield’s seven-spot increase from 2024 to 2025 is tied with Jared Goff for the 5th highest jump of any quarterback on the list and second highest among non-2024 rookies. Only Geno Smith rose higher, moving from 18th to 10th. Goff went from 16th to 9th overall.

Bucs QB Baker Mayfield – Photo by: USA Today

The jump is the second consecutive year where he has shot up PFF’s list. They had him 28th overall in his inaugural season with Tampa Bay after a challenging 2022 that saw him on three different teams. That season helped the Bucs buy low on the playmaking quarterback in a season where they had scant-little salary cap. Two years and two division titles later, both parties are feeling great about the partnership.

And make no mistake. Bucs general manager Jason Licht believes Mayfield is a capable of leading the team to a Super Bowl no matter where outside voices believe he ranks among his peers. When asked by a viewer on the Pewter Report Podcast about how the 2025 Bucs roster stacks up against the 2020 Super Bowl winning team, Licht was effusive in his praise for his current signal-caller.

“…we don’t have Tom Brady [this year], but we have Baker Mayfield. And Baker Mayfield has the ability to win a Super Bowl. And I would say overall roster very young, very talented on the secondary. Very similar. I like our roster now a little bit better there. I think it compares very favorably to it.”

Is The Discourse Fair?

Rival analytics company Field Vision has Baker Mayfield 10th in their “Threat/100” rating and 4th in their EPA/100 rating. Going beyond the numbers, it’s more effective to describe Mayfield. He proved last year that he can drive a tailored offense well as an operator. His pre-snap play was at another level and from the shotgun he became an assassin.

As a second-reaction player outside of structure he showed more variance than most. His high-end play could go toe-to-toe with Josh Allen of the Bills. But the lows in this area of his game were more prevalent than Allen or Lamar Jackson or even Jayden Daniels.

Mayfield’s arm can make all of the needed throws and in the past few years he has been able to feather/layer the ball better. That, paired with better decision making in structure has led to increased success in the hardest part of the field to win – the middle of the field. When targeting the middle of the field from the line of scrimmage to 10 yards off, Mayfield completed 71.5% of his passes for 1,589 yards with 13 touchdowns to 6 interceptions.

Baker Mayfield can do everything that is asked of a modern-day NFL quarterback and is worthy of the “franchise quarterback” moniker. And with a couple of subtle tweaks, he can become an undisputed top-tier quarterback in the NFL.