Baker can’t bake: Panthers must have success vs. Mayfield Sunday to win
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Panthers must contain Baker Mayfield to beat Bucs and secure NFC South lead.
- Mayfield has gone 5-0 vs. Carolina (4-0 with Tampa Bay, 1-0 with Cleveland).
- Bucs are 1-5 in past six games, which was also Mayfield’s record as Panthers starter.
If you are a Carolina Panthers fan and the name “Baker Mayfield” leaves a bad taste in your mouth, that’s completely understandable.
The fact of the matter is that — no matter what uniform Mayfield was wearing — the Panthers have lost almost every time he’s ever been in their vicinity.
The Panthers host Mayfield and Tampa Bay at 1 p.m. Sunday in Charlotte in a huge game between the two teams tied for the NFC South lead. Since he arrived in Tampa Bay, Mayfield is 4-0 against Carolina.
But let’s go back even further. As a rookie, in 2018, Mayfield outplayed Cam Newton and beat Carolina while he was at Cleveland. And then in 2022 when Mayfield started six games for Carolina, he went only 1-5 as a starter before getting benched.
Add it up and the Panthers are 1-10 in the 11 games that Mayfield has either started for them or against them. Even Tom Brady didn’t do that well against the Panthers — he was 8-4 all-time.
It makes sense that the Panthers believe that to beat Tampa Bay Sunday, you must control Mayfield. Even during this holiday season, Baker must not be allowed to bake.
Said Panthers defensive coordinator Ejiro Evero of Mayfield: “The challenge is he’s one of the great competitors in this league for certain. He’s going to fight… When you take a look at his skill set, he’s got a big arm, so he can make all the throws, and (he has an) ability to keep plays alive, scrambling, running through tackles.”
Mayfield has been playing with a rotating cast of receivers this year, but they are now all fairly healthy. Chief among them is Panther-killer Mike Evans, who has scored more receiving TDs (14) and gained more receiving yards (1,695) vs. Carolina than any other opposing player.
The upside for Carolina: Tampa Bay has recently been a team in disarray. The Buccaneers have gone 1-5 over their past six games, falling to 7-7 overall (just like Carolina). Tampa Bay coach Todd Bowles had a profanity-laced tirade following the team’s most recent loss, to Atlanta.
Mayfield, however, said that the defeat was actually his fault. “This one’s gonna haunt me,” Mayfield said after the game, regretting in particular his fourth-quarter interception. “This falls on my shoulders.”
Panthers coach Dave Canales has had a ton of experience with Mayfield since he was the Bucs offensive coordinator in 2023. His resurrection project with Mayfield — a relatively short quarterback with good mobility — helped convince the Panthers and owner David Tepper that Canales could perform similar miracles with Bryce Young.
Said Canales this week about Mayfield: “He’s going to try to win the down, whether it’s with his legs, whether it’s with his brain or with his arm.”
The Panthers got eviscerated by Mayfield in their most recent meeting, when the QB had five touchdown passes in a 48-14 win in the penultimate week of the 2024 season. But the way they will try to play him Sunday will be similar to the first meeting last year, when they picked off Mayfield twice and held Tampa Bay to only 10 total points through three quarters.
“That first game we played probably our best three quarters of football all last season,” Evero said. “And then we didn’t finish the right way.” Mayfield led the Bucs to 16 points in the fourth quarter and overtime, and Tampa Bay escaped with a 26-23 victory.
As for why Mayfield didn’t work out when he was with Carolina, that’s a subject I’ve written whole columns about before. The short version is this:
“The environment on the football side wasn’t set up for success, no matter how talented the players were,” one Panther source with direct knowledge of the team’s inner workings in 2022 told me for a story about Mayfield and Sam Darnold’s failures in Carolina that I wrote earlier this year.
Head coach Matt Rhule and then-offensive coordinator Ben McAdoo didn’t maximize Mayfield, that’s for sure. One Panthers player who was an important part of that 2022 team told me that he thought Mayfield wasn’t used correctly and threw from a stagnant pocket too often, rather than utilizing the movement and shifts he has orchestrated so well in Tampa Bay.
Before the season reached its midway point, Rhule was fired. Interim coach Steve Wilks preferred Darnold at QB. Mayfield barely played — he memorably took a few snaps with the scout team as a defensive lineman.
Mayfield asked for his release from Carolina in October 2022. It was granted. He got picked up by the L.A. Rams, led them to a victory two days later and has seemingly never looked back.
This year, though, Mayfield’s production has dipped after he made the Pro Bowl his first two seasons in Tampa Bay. This, at least, should give the Panthers some hope. They could technically beat him Sunday.
But if they do, it will be the first time.
