By Mallory Mattingly
Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Baker Mayfield had to lean on the Lord to pull him up from rock bottom so that he could now lead the 3-1 Bucs.
“God taught me a lesson. He had to take my career down to the studs and make me realize that I’m more than a football player,” Mayfield told Sports Spectrum. “There’s much more going on in the game of football, and for me to see that, I had to hit rock bottom. And it wasn’t just football; it was in our marriage. We weren’t doing well at all at this time. We were trying to have kids. It wasn’t going well.”
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“But I remember a couple of years ago, we talked about there’s that 99% of you that you could put on a facade as a guy you put on the mask, but behind closed doors, who are you really? What are you hiding? Are you being vulnerable?” Mayfield recalled. “And until my career got stripped down, I was hiding a lot, and then for me to climb back up, I had to dive into the Word and accept the grace, and that was something that was really, really hard for me, and when I eventually did, I started to see things from a different viewpoint.”
“And that was the biggest change in my life,” he explained. “And that’s a couple of years ago. And I think the best part that I’ve learned throughout the process [is] it’s constant work. It’s not like you just get baptized and you’re saved; you have to continue to work, because the enemy is out to get you. And that’s what I thought, that okay, once I achieve something, I can just move on. No, this is something that has to be part of the daily routine, and you have to make your priorities aligned with that.”
Last Sunday, Mayfield led the Bucs to their first home win of the 2025 season.
“First game back home in Tampa, big W. On to the next one. See y’all this Sunday — same time & place,” he wrote in a post on Instagram.
But no matter what happens on the field, Mayfield wants everyone to know that “Jesus is grace, perfection. Somebody that sacrificed everything, that gave us this opportunity to live life.”
The Bucs will play the Seattle Seahawks on Sunday at 4:05 p.m. EDT.
But regardless of the wins and losses, Mayfield focuses on keeping Christ at the center of his life.
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