Baker Mayfield used to keep a list. His childhood friends are convinced this started early in high school, back when he was 5 feet 5 and 120 pounds, a wannabe quarterback in a football-obsessed Texas town who had to crowhop like a center fielder just to throw it 35 yards.His buddies ribbed him. His parents wanted him to quit. He started writing down the names of anyone who doubted or dismissed him, easy fuel for a player who came to crave conflict.When he couldn’t find a target, he’d invent one. Once, during a 7-on-7 state championship game, Mayfield was torching an opposing cornerback so consistently that he started calling out his receivers’ routes before the snap, wanting the kid to know exactly how he was going to embarrass him.“Here comes the post!”“We’re running a fade! You can stop a fade, right?”The touchdowns piled up. The corner grew so frustrated his coach yanked him off the field. Mayfield kept chirping at him.“In all my years I’ve only had one player get a taunting penalty in 7-on-7,” says Lake Travis High School coach Hank Carter. “And Baker got several.”This NFL player might have the most on the line in 2026Zak KeeferAt the start of a Nike showcase event hosted by former NFL QB Trent Dilfer, Mayfield and Zach Austin, his best friend and top wideout, were lighting up a field of four- and five-star recruits. When he noticed none of the coaches were paying attention, Mayfield told Austin to pack up his cleats. They left halfway through.Mayfield needed the slights, the targets, the edge. “Some guys get riled up and don’t play worth a sh—,” says Lincoln Riley, one of his college coaches. “Baker’s different. Baker plays his best when his blood is boiling.”The overlooked high schooler became the cocky college star, then the fiery pro with the sharpest tongue in the league, hellbent on running toward any fight he could find. Now, on the verge of his ninth NFL season — and without a contract for his 10th — Mayfield has found his latest target: his own front office.He was once the toast of Cleveland, the city’s unofficial heir to LeBron James; by the end of his four-year stay he was feuding with the head coach and silencing the owner’s phone calls. The Browns dumped him for a quarterback facing 22 sexual assault allegations. The Panthers demoted him to the scout team. Colin Cowherd told him to retire. The list grew longer.“At some of the other places I’ve been, I’ve learned some things aren’t fixable,” Mayfield says. “I tried to force my own way, and anytime you make your own plan, you’re gonna have a nice surprise.”He’d forced his own way ever since he was too short and too small to get on the field at Lake Travis. Then the starter got hurt, and Mayfield went 25-2 over the next two seasons and led the team to a state title. He walked on at Texas Tech and won Big 12 Offensive Freshman of the Year. When the coaches refused to offer him a scholarship, he bolted for Oklahoma, knowing he’d have to start from the bottom. Again.His high school coach warned him: “Baker, they’ve got a kid there named Trevor Knight who just threw for 350 yards against Alabama and Nick Saban’s defense,” Carter said.“I don’t care,” Baker replied. “I’m gonna win the job.”For the first month, the Sooners staff didn’t even know he was on campus. “He just showed up one day and said, ‘Hey, can I join the football team?'” Riley remembers. Within three years he was the first walk-on in college football history to win the Heisman.“That’s why we drafted him No. 1 in Cleveland,” says Hue Jackson, one of the many coaches Mayfield has feuded with. “You know that famous Browns jersey with all the QB names on the back? Well, Baker’s a guy who we knew wouldn’t give a s— about that.”Mayfield broke onto the national stage as a freshman walk-on at Texas Tech in 2013 before transferring to Oklahoma the following year. (Ronald Martinez / Getty Images)Buccaneers general manager Jason Licht met Mayfield in the spring of 2023, the lowest point of the quarterback’s career. He’d been on three teams in eight months and was looking for a fourth. The Patriots called, wanting him to sit behind Mac Jones. The Ravens called, wanting him to sit behind Lamar Jackson. Licht called and promised open competition. The offer was $8.5 million — “pennies on the dollar,” the GM says. “We’re gonna put it out to the media that you’re competing with Kyle Trask,” Licht warned.“I don’t care,” Baker replied. “I’m gonna win the job.”Four quarters into his Bucs’ tenure, Mayfield announced his presence. He stiff-armed Vikings cornerback Byron Murphy on a scamper to the sideline, then screamed at him, “Get your weight up, little boy!”Licht was watching from the press box. “We might have something here,” he told himself.The Bucs won NFC South titles in 2023 and 2024 and looked even better to start 2025. Mayfield kept throwing bombs and running his mouth. “You’re gonna be real f—ing quiet at halftime,” he told Seahawks fans before a Week 5 game in Seattle. “I f—ing told you!” he gloated after a 38-35 win over the eventual champs.By midseason his name was in the MVP conversation. The Bucs were 6-2 and stirring talk of a Super Bowl run. “We have the team to do it,” Mayfield said then. He was so close to having everything he’s ever wanted. Maybe as close as he’ll ever get.Then came the skid. Seven losses in eight weeks. Mayfield got hurt and played hurt, succumbing to some of his most stubborn, self-sabotaging instincts. “He would have to be dead not to play,” Licht says. “Sometimes that’s not a good thing.”The final tally for the 2025 season: sprained MCL, sprained PCL, bruised knee, bruised bicep and sprained AC joint, evidence of a reckless style his offensive coordinator likened to a UFC fighter. Mayfield refused to miss a start, even if he was too injured to practice. His play regressed. The defense crumbled. The season fell apart.He watched the game that sealed the Bucs’ playoff fate from his kitchen in Tampa. The Panthers won the division via tiebreaker. “We s— the bed,” he mumbled, as captured in the latest season of the Netflix series, “Quarterback.” “This is the best roster I’ve ever been on.”The late-season slide muddied Mayfield’s future. A contract extension that once felt like a certainty became part of a more complicated conversation. Talks dragged. He set a deadline — the start of training camp — then held firm. He said he felt “disrespected” by the Bucs’ offers. He said the price was only going to go up. He said he wouldn’t negotiate until after the season.He sounded like a player resolute on proving his own team wrong.“Sometimes you have to back yourself into a corner and fight your way out,” he said.Licht didn’t expect this type of acrimony with a player he says “will be a friend for life,” but he’s not naïve about the personality he’s dealing with.“I hope he’s the quarterback as long as I’m still working,” Licht said in December, before Mayfield’s play slipped and the Bucs missed the playoffs. “I hope he’s my last quarterback.”In Licht’s mind, nothing has changed.Mayfield eventually scrapped his list, wanting to look forward instead of back. That doesn’t mean he forgot who was on it.“He’s got a long memory,” Riley says, “a detailed memory.”Late January. Mayfield sees a post on X about newly hired Falcons coach Kevin Stefanski and the “dumpster fire” of quarterbacks he churned through in Cleveland. By this point it’s been four years since Mayfield’s messy exit from the Browns. He’s found a home in Tampa. Re-established himself as a franchise quarterback. Started a family.And yet.