ESPN: Don’t Look For A Baker Mayfield Holdout
June 11th, 2026
Holdout seems unlikely.
Joe thinks this Baker Mayfield contract chatter is pretty good as fresh, unexpected content in the final weeks of underwear football season.
As Albert Breer of SI pointed out, there are no contract negotiations. Bucs AC/DC-loving general manager Jason Licht emailed an outline of a contract proposal to Mayfield’s agent and that’s where we stand. Hard to claim negotiations when only one side has done anything.
Earlier this week, Jeremy Fowler of ESPN made calls and afterwards noted he feels very confident Mayfield is looking for no less than $50 million a year. Fowler seemed to think that figure as a floor is very fair.
It’s hard to believe Mayfield wants to leave the Bucs. Yes, he stated he loves Tampa and is setting down roots. His two children were born here.
And, as Joe pointed out in soon-to-be-published edition of the “Ira Kaufman Podcast,” Mayfield is currently playing behind one of the league’s best offensive lines (when healthy). Does he really want to play for another team with a lesser line and get beat up and maybe have his career shortened?
Additionally, Mayfield’s best friends on the team are offensive linemen. He certainly doesn’t want to leave them hanging.
Joe is confident Mayfield is the Bucs starting quarterback in 2027. And Fowler doubted seriously that Mayfield will activate Operation Shutdown and hold out.
More on Baker Mayfield’s contractual future on @SportsCenter with @BCusterTV pic.twitter.com/GIcDqVp2f7
— Jeremy Fowler (@JFowlerESPN) June 5, 2026
June 11th, 2026 at 7:14 am
I know TB12 was never the highest paid QB. He always took less so the team could invest in talent across the board. I guess it doesn’t work like that any more. Doesn’t Dak Prescott make 60 mil a year? Never won anything.
June 11th, 2026 at 7:43 am
I like football talk, not contract talk. Baker is or QB this season, probably next. End of saga.
June 11th, 2026 at 7:46 am
Baker doesnt hold any cards at the table so holding out doesnt make sense lol….BUCS should makr baker play out his contract this year…if he wins a playoff game, slap him with the tag and have him do it again…
GO BUCS!!!!
June 11th, 2026 at 8:08 am
Jason Licht emailed outline of contract proposal to Baker’s agent. Baker responded in public about it not being completely to his liking yet. That is def called negotiations. The start of negotiations at the very least.
Don’t agree with the “hard to claim negotiations” part
That sounds like some McVay thought Bain Jr wouldn’t help them win a SB THIS season, but apparently Ty Simpson would – like Houdini stretching logic there. The things we convince ourselves of when the obvious is right there.
June 11th, 2026 at 8:25 am
“Hard to claim negotiations when only one side has done anything.” I’m 100% certain there has been a two way conversation. Therefor a negotiation has taken place.
Licht: Here’s our offer.
Bakers agent: No thanks
June 11th, 2026 at 8:32 am
Of course he will show up, he is under contract.
But …..
Market price for a NFL STARTING QUARTERBACK
50 million is the floor for profile
June 11th, 2026 at 8:47 am
This is going to be Front Page news until “Born Again” Baker signs a new deal. The Bucs are in no position to drag this out. They have no other options than Baker. SIGN HIM!! Go Bucs!
June 11th, 2026 at 8:47 am
$50Ms a year to ride a roller coaster.
June 11th, 2026 at 8:53 am
“slap him with the tag” = 80 mil cap hit in ’27 for Baker alone.
June 11th, 2026 at 9:09 am
Yeah, Baker’s response that we’re not even close a few weeks ago had me freaked out a little bit. Since seeing what other QBs are making I feel better now. Shouldn’t be difficult to get a deal done barring any stupidity on either side. Bake is top ten when he and O line are healthy. Easier said than done, but coming to terms quickly + healthy O line + better coaching + improved defense = fun times, taking back the South, playoff berth. Simple math lol
June 11th, 2026 at 9:32 am
It’s June in the off season. Media is not allowed to see everyday at camp… and there’s only a week left anyhow. Nothing new happened yesterday… except for an extreme Spurs collapse (nothing new Bucs wise).
This is the news we must read. It is a non-issue but they’ve got to write about something.
And we haven’t even hit the football doldrums of early to mid July yet.
Stay the course, chaps. Nothing to worry about here.
June 11th, 2026 at 9:33 am
This entire thing is a negotiation. The Art of the Deal, if you will. Like him or hate him (and it’s almost certainly one of the two), Donald Trump literally wrote the book on the same sorts of negotiation tactics that are used by anyone wanting to make a good, shrewd deal, from sports agent to somebody walking in the door at Bill Currie Ford.
It all starts with picking your target. In this case, Baker probably wants a longer term deal (in NFL terms for a guy his age, most likely 5 years), and then he’s going to make a money demand that he knows the team won’t pay him. That’s when the negotiation begins.
Hypothetical conversation: Party 1 (in this case, Baker): “I want X.” Then, Party 2 (in this case, the Bucs) step in and devalue the product (this is why your car salesman takes a walk around your trade-in, pointing out every superficial scrape, scratch, and ding… he’s trying to make you think you car is worth less than you want them to pay you)… “look, Baker, you’re three years older, your arm isn’t quite as strong, and your performance over the last 9 games of 2025 just weren’t that good – you;re asking too much. We’ll pay you Y.”
The “X” Baker wants and the “Y” the Bucs are willing to trade are going to begin so far apart that they won’t look like they’re even close, but in the back of both sides’ minds, secretly, each side knows what they’re be comfortable with and then the *real* negotiation begins to get to that number. The truth is, the number both sides are considering probably isn’t that far off, but neither side wants to start there.
They aren’t far off. The just look like they are.
June 11th, 2026 at 9:35 am
Baker thinks he’s worth $50 million + per year????
He’s not even worth half that amount. Already vastly overpaid.
Hasn’t won a playoff game since 2023. Missed the playoffs in 2025.
Almost a .500 record as the QB1 in Tampa if you include 1-2 in playoffs.
That’s backup material not starter material. He’s a scrub.
June 11th, 2026 at 9:49 am
Baker has shown flashes of brilliance and were fortunate to have him BUT nobody is bigger than the team, play out your contract, you have a year maybe two to make it to the sb otw we gotta look for somebody else
June 11th, 2026 at 10:18 am
R-E-L-A-X, Bake isn’t going anywhere. We were lucky enough to have him fall in our lap. JL and the crew aren’t letting him walk (shy of catastrophic injury(s). They’ve already started to clear cap room. Signing CG to a bloated contract set us back and probably cost us HOF ME13. Losing ME13 hurt, but Baker can now spread the ball around without having to worry about forcing 1k worth of catches to ME13 while keeping everyone else happy. The offense should open up
June 11th, 2026 at 10:22 am
He’s a quality starter in the NFL,, that means he’s good for 50mil/4 years / 2 guaranteed at 100mil,,, it will get done ,,, and one of the best lines in the NFL when healthy,,, we haven’t seen that for a while either
June 11th, 2026 at 10:22 am
Baker is easily worth 50 million+ per year.
Sign him! Do it now! And he’s plenty young enough for a 4-5 year deal.
June 11th, 2026 at 10:31 am
OBTW, Lmob50 thinks they can find starting QB’s for $25…TOO funny. We almost won the Division (Baker’s already shown he can win) with broken toys andayo for WR’s and OL while the middle of the D was open real estate! Puh-leez!!
June 11th, 2026 at 10:46 am
Too bad Jason kept The Great Regressor and lost Mike.
June 11th, 2026 at 11:15 am
I think the Bucs want the control. Let’s see how he plays in 2026 – how does the team play? If we want to move on to a new coaching staff in 2027 and that coaching staff wants to keep Baker long term we do so. If they rather move on from Baker we let him go. Maybe we franchise him in 2027 ($50ish million) and he’s our 1yr bridge QB if the Bucs decide to draft a QB in 2027. What the Bucs don’t want is to sign Baker to a BIG contract before the 2026 season begins…we suck this year and it impacts who we can sign as our next head coach.
Baker is due $40m in 2026 and $50m or so in 2027 on the Franchise tag (basically 2yr $90m)…So you can see how Baker’s camp is thinking – if the Bucs bring to the table a 3yr $150m with $100m guaranteed (2yr deal) that’s not much more $$ than Baker not doing anything from a contract extension perspective.
I personally want to see Baker go crazy this year, but we some how we fire Bowles anyway 🙂
Go Bucs!
June 11th, 2026 at 11:45 am
I agree with one of the scribes above. I believe the holdup will be contract length more than the cash. Baker wants 5 years and Tampa is offering 3. Baker wants $57M a year and Tampa is offering $50M. It’ll be $53M for 4 years and big h sides will be happy. BTW, Brady is was worth well over $300 when he signed with Tampa, so money was never an issue.
June 11th, 2026 at 12:12 pm
I’ll repost this since I posted it late into another thread:
Mayfield’s contract voids on February 20, 2027
There is dead money allocated to each year thru 2029
If a contract extension is not reached by then his void years accelerate and the Bucs take a dead money cap hit in 2027 of $30.15 million
If he leaves in free agency the Bucs take a dead money cap hit in 2027 of $30.15 million
If they franchise tag him he will count $50.67 million in salary PLUS the $30.15 dead money hit for a total of $80.82 cap hit for 2027
If they extend him prior to February 20, 2027 the $30.15 million can be spread out over the duration of the new contract
While NONE of us can know how this will play out, it is fairly safe to make a few assumptions:
The Bucs are unlikely to use the franchise tag and have Mayfield account for $80.82 million against the 2027 cap
The Bucs are less likely to want to let him walk and absorb a $30.15 million cap hit on a player that is no longer on the team
Extending Mayfield’s contract would allow for structuring that would lessen the cap hit for 2027 to a level at or below the 2026 cap hit he accounts for now.
The ONLY way to avoid a $30.15 million dead money cap hit in ’27 is to re-sign him. ALL other options result in the acceleration of the cap hits which are now spread out thru ’29.
June 11th, 2026 at 1:01 pm
What is different about Baker is he is team first and has ethics. Other Qbs are selfish such as Dak and Watson and eventually the me first attitude results in no playoff wins like we in Dallas and Cleveland. Shadeur is also a selfish prima Donna and the lack of results will continue in Brown’s town.
June 11th, 2026 at 1:04 pm
Gotti-Dog-05-20-84 Says:
June 11th, 2026 at 12:12 pm
I’ll repost this since I posted it late into another thread:
Mayfield’s contract voids on February 20, 2027
There is dead money allocated to each year thru 2029
If a contract extension is not reached by then his void years accelerate and the Bucs take a dead money cap hit in 2027 of $30.15 million
If he leaves in free agency the Bucs take a dead money cap hit in 2027 of $30.15 million
If they franchise tag him he will count $50.67 million in salary PLUS the $30.15 dead money hit for a total of $80.82 cap hit for 2027
If they extend him prior to February 20, 2027 the $30.15 million can be spread out over the duration of the new contract
While NONE of us can know how this will play out, it is fairly safe to make a few assumptions:
The Bucs are unlikely to use the franchise tag and have Mayfield account for $80.82 million against the 2027 cap
The Bucs are less likely to want to let him walk and absorb a $30.15 million cap hit on a player that is no longer on the team
Extending Mayfield’s contract would allow for structuring that would lessen the cap hit for 2027 to a level at or below the 2026 cap hit he accounts for now.
The ONLY way to avoid a $30.15 million dead money cap hit in ’27 is to re-sign him. ALL other options result in the acceleration of the cap hits which are now spread out thru ’29.
————–
Wow, great work on doing all the numbers.
And you’re right, they’re basically going to be forced to do a new deal as the franchise tag is off the table, basically.
However, I would disagree about taking a $30M hit next year, in the current NFL, that’s not as big of a deal as it used to me, plus if Baker bombed and they wanted to let him walk, it means the team did poorly and everyone is getting fired and the rebuild has begun – so I don’t think it’s that big of a deal.
But the $80M cap hit would be overwhelming.
Of course if Baker played well enough to get franchised, then the team would just extend him anyways, but it does make it a lot more difficult to get anything done.
Anywho, great job on that.
June 11th, 2026 at 1:16 pm
The only way he leaves is if Licht and the Glazers don’t want him. Here are the possible ways this ends:
1) the team and player come to a middle ground before the season starts where he gets his money bump and the team gets protections – most likely
2) he plays great, good or solid and gets a contract after the season that reflects those levels
3) he plays good but not great and the two sides don’t see eye to eye and he gets tagged
4) he plays horribly and he walks
In any of those scenarios the Bucs hold the cards.
June 11th, 2026 at 1:33 pm
Obvious
80 million cap hit are terrible cards. And no compensation for Baker.
June 11th, 2026 at 1:57 pm
Badbucs Says:
June 11th, 2026 at 1:33 pm
Obvious
80 million cap hit are terrible cards. And no compensation for Baker.
————
The numbers are real – but no, that’s not the only scenario.
Again, if the Bucs wanted to tag Baker, it means he had a really good season (or perhaps got hurt early in the year or preseason). In that case, they’d want him to sign a long-term deal.
The $80M number makes things more difficult, sure, but it’s not a binary choice. But it does give the Bucs more incentive to try to get a team friendly deal done to avoid that.
Also, another option, the Bucs could tag and then trade Baker as well. But again, if he played well enough that they’d franchise him, it’s really unlikely they’d want to trade Baker unless something really unexpected happened, like Jalon Daniels becomes the next Tom Brady. The odds of that happening? 0%. But just throwing out there some different scenarios.
But Gotti did a great job running the numbers, and it shows the Bucs don’t have quite as many options as I thought, but it’s also not zero options.
June 11th, 2026 at 2:15 pm
All these numbers make me feel like I rode that merry go round on the playground after too much EH Taylor…UGH
June 11th, 2026 at 2:25 pm
Ballwasher61 Says:
June 11th, 2026 at 2:15 pm
All these numbers make me feel like I rode that merry go round on the playground after too much EH Taylor…UGH
———–
As they said in Caddyshack, “well, the world needs ditch diggers too.”
June 11th, 2026 at 2:54 pm
To put all these “options” into perspective consider this:
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers currently have between $39.94 million and $43.61 million in projected 2027 salary cap space.
The Tracker Discrepancy: OverTheCap tracks their available space at $39,939,395 based on a projected league-wide cap of $327 million. Spotrac sets their space slightly higher at $43,608,400.
Why This Space is an Illusion: The Missing Dead Money
Neither tracker has applied the $30.15 million dead cap hit yet, because Baker’s contract hasn’t officially voided. The second that hits in February, their functional cap space instantly drops down to $9 million to $13 million.
The Empty Roster Problem:
This $40M+ estimate only accounts for roughly 46 players currently under contract. They still have to fund an entire 53-man active roster, a practice squad, and their rookie draft class.Without a pre-February extension to smooth things out, that $30 million penalty will essentially wipe out every dollar of free cap space the Buccaneers are currently projected to have.
So no matter how many “options” keep getting floated about here…there really is only one that is financially viable and that involves a new contract and restructuring of the existing dead money.
“Oh, but THEN the Bucs could trade him!!” …….No, but no Chickadee. Doing so would result in an immediate cap hit of all the money paid out as signing bonus which would occur as a way to lower his impact on the cap space for ’27. That figure would be $65 million to $70 million.
The bottom line, whether anyone here wants to believe it, is that Mayfield has the leverage in these negotiations. This will be a marriage with no financially viable divorce proceedings.
I suppose, but it’s a very weak supposition, that a team may be willing to work a trade where they take on Mayfield’s new contract (or agree to give him a new long term deal) AND pay the Bucs $30 million in cash……there’s also the chance I could reconcile with my now deceased ex-wife……
June 11th, 2026 at 3:19 pm
Gotti- Numbers are fungible – at least to some degree – and you do not have to be cap compliant when you franchise a player, you only need to do that by the first day of the new league year, so you do have time to do things like sign and trade. And, as I said, I don’t really see that happening in any case, since if Baker played well enough to tag, then why would they trade him? I was just throwing that out there as an option should something unexpected happen like a backup blooming into Tom Brady out of nowhere and the Bucs being QB rich all of a sudden.
Also you’re not taking into account that the cap has been going up bigly every year – we don’t know what it goes up to next year, but in the last 3 years it’s gone up $30M, $24M and $22M each offseason.
Also on the cap, the Bucs can redo other players to make space – something they do anyways all the time.
To be clear, overall I agree with your point. Baker has leverage here – but it’s not 90/10, I’d say it’s more like 65/35.
June 11th, 2026 at 3:37 pm
So you sign and trade…..they’re still left with a $30 million cap hit. All monies already paid to a player remain on the books of the team that made the payment.
Example: Every time Mike Evans restructured his contract he received a signing bonus. Those bonuses get spread out over X number of years. For ’26 his dead money hit is a little over $13 million….in ’27 it will be $30.2 million.
The Bucs are still taking a cap hit on former players like Carlton Davis, Russell Cage, Shaq Barrett, Ryan Jensen. For ’27, you can add Lavonte David to that list. Chris Godwin has $18 million in dead money that will hit the cap in ’27 also.
Mayfield’s $30 million cap hit happens on February 20, 2027 if he’s not re-signed prior to then. That is the ONLY way that $30 million won’t be a ’27 cap hit. And there is no way to clear it off the books once it hits.
June 11th, 2026 at 3:40 pm
And yes, I am accounting for the cap space increase….the projected figure for ’27 is $327 million…..
June 11th, 2026 at 4:00 pm
Hold out?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!
Give me a break!
Some of you goof balls are drinking the kool-aid…
Wow!