Baker Mayfield Practiced in Full on Wednesday: What the Buccaneers Friday Decision Means for Jalon Daniels
Baker Mayfield practiced in full on Wednesday for the first time since dislocating his right thumb on September 27, and Todd Bowles said he expects to name a Week 7 starter on Friday.
Mayfield wore a glove on the throwing hand and split repetitions with rookie Jalon Daniels. Bowles called the session encouraging and, per ESPN’s Jenna Laine, said the real question is how the thumb feels Thursday after a full day of work.
The Buccaneers are 1-5. The call is harder than the contract makes it look.
What Mayfield Did Before the Injury
Tampa Bay lost all three games Mayfield started. He completed 61 of 96 passes for 615 yards with two touchdowns and two interceptions, and across those three weeks he posted the worst expected points added per dropback of any quarterback with at least 50 attempts, according to NFL Next Gen Stats.
He also signed a three-year, $165 million extension on September 8, five days before the opener. That is $55 million a year through 2029. No team benches that over six quarters of bad football, and nobody should pretend otherwise.
The thumb went in the fourth quarter against Minnesota, on a fourth-and-1 throw that Blake Cashman broke up into an interception. An MRI the next day showed no ligament or tendon damage, and Bowles put the timeline at a minimum of three weeks.
What the Rookie Did
Daniels went undrafted out of Kansas in April and signed with Tampa Bay on May 8. He is 23, turns 24 four days after Sunday’s game, and he won the backup job in August over Jake Browning, who was cut.
He is 1-2 as a starter, and the one win is the best thing that has happened to this team all year: 24-16 at Dallas on a Thursday night as 9.5-point underdogs, with 19 completions on 25 attempts for 189 yards, a touchdown and no interceptions.
The other two were rougher. He threw two first-half interceptions in a 17-14 loss to Green Bay, then two more in the fourth quarter of a 26-19 overtime loss to Pittsburgh, a game Tampa Bay led 16-3 with 15 minutes left. On the season he has 501 yards, three touchdowns, five interceptions and a 63.4 passer rating.
The Case for Each
Bowles said Monday the staff was planning as though Daniels would start again, and that was before Mayfield threw a ball. Leonard Fournette, who won a Super Bowl in Tampa, argued on his podcast that Daniels is the better option right now for the simplest reason available. “They’re winning,” he said. “When Baker was back there, they weren’t winning nothing.”
The counterargument is arithmetic. Tampa Bay sits 2.5 games behind Carolina in the NFC South with 11 to play, and Carolina at 3-2 is exactly who they are chasing. Sunday is in Charlotte at 1 p.m. ET on FOX against a Panthers team that beat Philadelphia last week.
If the Buccaneers still believe they are in this, they start the $55 million quarterback. They should, and not because Mayfield has earned it this season. A 1-5 team with a division still reachable does not get to hold auditions in late October.
One More Problem
Whoever starts will be throwing to a thin group. Emeka Egbuka did not practice with a concussion and a foot injury, Bucky Irving and Zyon McCollum sat out with illness, and left tackle Luke Goedeke missed Wednesday with a calf issue. Five Buccaneers carried an illness designation on the same report.
Bowles gets Friday to decide. The thumb gets Thursday to tell him.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
