When Bucs quarterback Baker Mayfield signed with the team in 2023, he brought a much-needed boost of energy and momentum to Tampa Bay following the retirement of Tom Brady.
Brady helped the organization regain prominence by winning the Super Bowl in 2020, but in his final year in 2022, the team failed to win, was full of distractions, and was an overall disappointment as the team failed to build on the success of the previous two seasons.
Mayfield quickly took over and won over his teammates and fan base by exceeding expectations, which was rewarded when the Bucs signed him to a three-year, $100 million contract. He recently joined two-time Cy Young Award winner Corey Kluber on his Casa De Klub Podcastand the quarterback spoke there and on Wednesday at the team facility about his attitude towards joining the team and following in the footsteps of the greatest NFL player of all time.
Baker Mayfield: Tom Brady “was different”
Bucs QB Tom Brady – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR
Tom Brady demanded top performance.
That’s what made Brady the GOAT of the NFL. Brady’s seven Super Bowls and countless records speak for themselves. What he accomplished in his three seasons with the Bucs wasn’t just a ride into the sunset, but an exemplary example of what it means to age like a fine wine. No one could replace the impact he had on the organization and the league itself, but the environment he created was also one that stressed some guys out.
This is where Baker Mayfield came into play.
Mayfield came to Tampa Bay as someone with a completely different career and personality. Someone who hadn’t made it, but just wanted to make it and stay as a starting quarterback. When he joined the team, the mood there changed completely.
“The management guys and Coach Bowles all just said, ‘Just be yourself. That’s all we want from you,'” Mayfield said on the Casa De Klub podcast about signing his one-year deal. “With Tom (Brady), the building was a little different. Game-wise, Tom was different, obviously. He had everyone on their toes, (in a) nervous environment, so I think everyone was pretty stressed out.”
“Everyone expected the Bucs not to be good last year. They wanted me to come in and be myself, to bring a little more joy back to football for the guys who weren’t having as much fun. They just asked me to keep raising the level of competition. They just asked me to be myself, and as a player you really can’t ask for much more than that.”
Bucs QB Baker Mayfield – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR
That’s not a bad thing, and one could argue that both versions of the Buccaneers required different leadership styles. In 2019, the Bucs had all the pieces, but they lacked a truly game-changing quarterback, one who could lift them from the depths of the NFC South and give them a taste of playoff football the organization hadn’t seen since 2007.
Brady’s experience in the big games, coupled with an innate desire to improve the players around him, rubbed off over the next three seasons, and that gold standard is still embellished by the remaining players who stayed and passed it on to the next generation.
“You hear a lot of good stories,” Mayfield said on the podcast. “They won a lot of games, but it’s just different. We have very different personalities, so I just tried to be myself. I didn’t try to step into his shoes or do anything like that, and you can’t do that. He got to his level by being himself and in his own way, and I think that’s what everyone else did, too. You just have to do it in your own way.”
After Brady (finally) retired, the team needed a different leadership style. He was joined by several well-known veterans who walked the plank to accompany him in the boat parade, and the combination of an ambitious Mayfield with a squad of veterans and young players proved to be the perfect mix. They quickly embodied a team with bite and a mentality of not only proving others wrong, but proving yourself right, as head coach Todd Bowles emphasized at his press conference on Wednesday.
Todd Bowles: “Nobody will ever be Tom,” Baker came and “has a place he calls home”
Bucs QB Baker Mayfield and HC Todd Bowles – Photo by: USA Today
During further discussion of this topic on Wednesday, both Baker Mayfield and Todd Bowles commented on it.
“Well, the biggest thing he did was not try to be Tom, and the biggest thing we did was not want him to be Tom,” Bowles said of Mayfield moving into Brady’s shoes. “The strategies have changed since Tom was here, the players have changed since Tom was here. Baker is his own guy.”
“I always say, ‘Nobody will ever be Tom.’ You know, you put his shoes on the shelf, buy a new pair and break them in, and Baker has come in and understood the system well. The guys have rallied around him; he has a place he calls home, we trust him, he trusts us and he’s settled in very well here.”
However, Bowles did not want to compare the two’s different personalities.
“I don’t know anything about that,” Bowles said of the comparisons. “Tom was there two years ago. He’s a Hall of Famer, he’s the best player of all time and there’s probably nothing else to talk about.”
Mayfield also talked about what it was like to follow in Brady’s footsteps.
“For me, it’s the same answer I gave you when I first got here: I’m not going to try to follow in Tom’s footsteps – that’s not how I do things,” Mayfield said. “Tom, of course, did it his way and was incredibly successful at it. A lot of that – just being my authentic self and the best version of myself – is because this place has allowed me to do that.
“When you have more success than she did in 2022, you have more fun. It’s different, and it’s different every year, and there are a lot of new faces anyway. (There were) a lot of changes between 2022 and 2023. I’m just trying to be the best version of myself.”
Baker Mayfield is just going his own way with his own shoes, and that’s fine with the 2024 Bucs. He wore them without trying to fit into Tom Brady’s, and they quickly became a comfortable pair.
