Baker Mayfield enters the 2026 fantasy football season carrying a massive chip on his shoulder. Motivation is incredibly high for the veteran after he failed to get a long-term contract extension done the way he wanted this offseason, and he didn’t shy away from expressing it.
Should You Draft Baker Mayfield in Fantasy Football?
Mayfield is our guy. Baker the touchdown maker has shown some propensity to run in Tampa Bay. That’s not really how quarterbacks tend to age, but his best two rushing seasons have come over the past two years.
If you paid attention at all this offseason, my guy is motivated. Not that normal NFL players aren’t, but you don’t usually see guys in the middle of a contract negotiation come back and talk the way he did this summer, saying that the brass in Tampa is going to be sorry that it didn’t already pay him and that he’s going to earn the bag with time. This is a guy who runs hot, and I think he could do some nice things here. He had 8 QB1 finishes a season ago.
Mike Evans is out of town. Emeka Egbuka seems to be entering the season a little banged up with this toe injury that he can’t shake. If that’s a problem, we’ve got bigger problems, because Chris Godwin has seen better days. Jalen McMillan had health issues last year after a great rookie year. He could step up. I like him more next to Egbuka, not instead of him.
I think the question here you have to ask yourself is how healthy this team stays and how much of a bet you want to put on it. To me, it feels like you’re getting a little cute.
But I think Mayfield offers enough of a ceiling that you put him in one of these Frankenstein builds if you want to leave a draft with Mayfield and Aaron Rodgers or something like that, where you mismatch the schedules, piece it together, and hope that Mayfield or Rodgers, for that matter, can prove themselves as a top-12, top-15 guy on a consistent basis. I think that’s the realm we’re in.
He’s not the set-it-and-forget-it type of starter, but if I’m right, if Chris Godwin gives us anything of use and Jalen McMillan is stretching the field the way we saw him do it as a rookie, I think there’s a world in which he’s a top-12 quarterback, probably more of a top-15 quarterback, for the season. I just don’t think you have to bet on it.
With Mayfield, it’s the start of a tier of quarterbacks where I’m drafting two for one spot, and I’m okay with that. If you need to go this direction, if you elected to wait on addressing the position, fine. Go with Baker, take your chances, and hope that he leans into this confidence, motivation, whatever you want to call it. I think there are paths to production here. He’s not necessarily a lock, but I do think he gets there in the end and justifies drafting him at the very least.
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Baker Mayfield’s Week 1 Fantasy Outlook
Do you really want to tempt Mayfield with a good time?
I’m as in the weeds as it gets when it comes to ranking/projecting these players, and I’ll get there in a minute, but doesn’t this just feel like a video-game type of spot?
An emotional QB with an axe to grind against an organization that didn’t pony up this preseason against a defense that has struggled at the highest of rates.
This is going to be fun.
Cincy is a bottom-5 pass defense in terms of TD rate and yards per completion over the past two seasons. I think the Bucs’ run game gives us a little more this year than last (Bucky Irving was literally the worst qualified RB in yards per carry last year), but if Joe Burrow (my QB1 for the week) pushes this environment like I think he can, this looks like a volume Mayfield spot.
He holds QB1 status for me this week, and that’s saying something given the depth of the position.
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Where Mayfield Ranks Among 2026 Quarterbacks
- Matthew Stafford | LAR
- Kyler Murray | MIN
- Jared Goff | DET
- Tyler Shough | NO
- Malik Willis | MIA
- Baker Mayfield | TB
- Daniel Jones | IND
- C.J. Stroud | HOU
- Sam Darnold | SEA
- Cam Ward | TEN
- Bryce Young | CAR
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