Baker Mayfield, two weeks into the $165 million deal: turnovers, accuracy and what has changed

"It just stings more because we're 0-2," Baker Mayfield said after Sunday's loss to Cleveland, a small sentence that captured a large problem. Twelve days earlier, on Tuesday, September 8, Mayfield signed a three-year, $165 million extension, the richest contract in franchise history. BucsWorld already covered the deal itself and what the numbers mean; this piece is not about the money. It is about the quarterback who signed it, and what he has actually done on the field since: four turnovers, his weakest passing line of the season in Week 2, and a Tampa Bay team that is 0-2 for the first time since 2014.

Key facts

• Baker Mayfield has lost four turnovers through two games in 2026: three fumbles at Cincinnati in Week 1 and one interception against Cleveland in Week 2.
• In Week 2 against the Browns, Mayfield completed 21 of 34 passes for 182 yards, one touchdown and one interception, a passer rating of 73.4 and an ESPN QBR of 53.1.
• In Week 1 at Cincinnati, Mayfield completed 23 of 28 passes for 216 yards with no interceptions, a passer rating of 98.8, but lost three fumbles.
• Mayfield led the NFL with 13 fumbles in 2024, though he lost only 2 of them, and he has thrown more interceptions than any quarterback in the league since arriving in Tampa Bay in 2023.
• Mayfield agreed to a three-year, $165 million extension on Tuesday, September 8, five days before the season opener.

Two ways of reading passer rating and QBR

Before the numbers, two terms this piece leans on. Passer rating is an old NFL formula, built from completion percentage, yards per attempt, touchdowns and interceptions, that turns a passing line into one number, roughly 0 to 158.3, where anything above 100 is a very good day. QBR is ESPN's newer alternative, scaled 0 to 100, that also folds in sacks, scrambles and how much of a play's success or failure belongs to the quarterback rather than his blockers or receivers. The two do not always agree, and in Week 2 they told slightly different stories about the same 60 minutes.

Week 1: clean through the air, ruinous with the ball loose

At Cincinnati, Mayfield actually played efficiently as a passer: 23 of 28 for 216 yards, no interceptions, a passer rating of 98.8, plus a rushing touchdown. The box score alone would suggest a solid road performance. It was not, because Mayfield lost three fumbles, one of them scooped up and returned for a touchdown, turning a 3-0 Tampa Bay lead into a deficit the Buccaneers never recovered from in a 33-27 loss, as BucsWorld's Week 1 recap detailed. Mayfield also revealed afterward that his helmet headset had cut in and out from the opening drive, the worst he said he had experienced in his career. He did not hide behind it. "It's not an excuse," he said, pointing at his own three fumbles as the correction that had to come before Cleveland.

Week 2: the numbers get worse, and so does the finish

Against the Browns, the passing line itself declined: 21 of 34 for 182 yards, 5.4 yards per attempt, one touchdown to Emeka Egbuka and one interception, thrown to Cleveland's Myles Harden and returned 25 yards. That is a passer rating of 73.4 and a QBR of 53.1, both below league average for a starting quarterback in a given week, with three sacks taken on top. BucsWorld's Week 2 recap covered the two-hour lightning delay that split the fourth quarter, and how Mayfield's night ended: a fade route to rookie Ted Hurst III fell incomplete in the end zone, and so did a follow-up throw to Egbuka on the very next snap, closing a 23-19 loss with the ball in his hands and nothing to show for it.

A separate piece already dug into why Tampa Bay's offense as a whole keeps stalling under Zac Robinson: the red zone numbers, the third-down rate, the receiver rotation. This one stays on the man throwing the ball.

Slump, or a pattern that predates the deal

Four turnovers in two games looks alarming in isolation. It looks less like a new problem and more like an old one resurfacing when set against Mayfield's own history. In 2024, his best season in Tampa Bay by nearly every measure (a career-high 71.4 percent completion rate, 4,500 yards, 41 touchdowns against 16 interceptions and a 106.8 rating), he also led the NFL with 13 fumbles, tied with Kirk Cousins, though he lost only 2 of them. Since joining the Buccaneers in 2023, Mayfield has thrown more interceptions than any quarterback in the league and is tied with Baltimore's Lamar Jackson for the most fumbles over that span. Pro Football Focus data cited by Sports Illustrated's Bucs channel put his turnover-worthy play rate at 3.3 percent in both 2023 and 2024, a steady number rather than a one-year spike.

His 2025 season looked different on paper: completion percentage dropped to 63.2, yards fell to 3,693, and his rating settled at 90.6, a downgrade widely tied to a shoulder injury he played through for part of the year. What did not change is the ball security. A Pewter Report piece this week on whether Mayfield can fix his fumbling put it plainly, and Mayfield himself did not dispute the framing: "The fumbles are something I can get fixed," he said, adding that if it were not fixable, he would probably be in a different spot in his career. Two games into a $165 million extension, that sentence reads as a promise still unpaid.

What Mayfield actually said this week

Mayfield has not dodged the questions. After the Cleveland loss he described the frustration directly: "Frustrated because it's close. You can feel it. You can see it. We're moving the ball at times, and then just shooting ourselves in the foot." A week earlier, after Cincinnati, he took a more specific kind of blame, one aimed away from his own defense rather than at it. "I thought the defense was good all day," he said, adding that his turnovers had given Cincinnati short fields to work with and that "you can't ask for them to be superheroes." He was not blaming his defense, he was owning that his own giveaways had put it in an impossible spot, twice.

Pewter Report framed the broader story this week under the headline that Mayfield "has shocked everyone, but for the wrong reasons," a pointed callback to his own preseason line that Tampa Bay would "shock a lot of people" in 2026. It is one outlet's opinion, but the contrast it draws, between the promise in August and the giveaways in September, matches what shows up in the box scores.

The fair verdict

Not all of Tampa Bay's 0-2 start belongs to its quarterback. The offense around him has its own problems with finishing drives, and Week 1's headset trouble was real, confirmed and outside his control. But three of the team's four turnovers through two games came from Mayfield's own hands, and a $165 million quarterback is paid specifically to be the exception to a shaky supporting cast, not another variable in the equation. The Week 1 passer rating shows he can still be efficient when the ball stays in his hands; the Week 2 numbers show what happens when accuracy alone is not enough to finish games.

Minnesota visits Raymond James Stadium on Sunday, September 27, with quarterback Kyler Murray set to return from the concussion protocol after backup Carson Wentz led the Vikings to a 2-0 start in his absence. Tampa Bay will be the more desperate team on that field. For Mayfield, the standard after two turnover-marred losses is not a highlight play, it is a clean, boring afternoon: no fumbles, no gambling interceptions, and a passer rating that finally matches what the contract, and the two seasons that earned it, say he is capable of.