NFL players voted Baker Mayfield the 77th-best player in football for 2026. Pro Football Network left him off its Top 100 entirely. That gap is the whole debate, and Ian Cummings laid out the reasoning on Football Debate Club.
Start with the metric. Mayfield posted a PFN QB Impact score of 74.4 in 2025, which ranked 22nd among quarterbacks. For a passer who graded fourth in that same proprietary metric a year earlier, that is a steep fall, and it tracks with what Tampa Bay’s season became.
Baker Mayfield’s 2025 Regression Is Why PFN’s Top 100 Passed
The split tells the story. Mayfield opened the year with a 16-to-2 touchdown-to-interception ratio, then posted a 10-to-9 mark over the back half. His full-season line landed at 3,693 yards and 26 touchdowns, both well down from 2024, and his 11 interceptions were bunched almost entirely in the second half. The Buccaneers mirrored it, starting 6-2 before finishing 2-7 and backing into an 8-9 record that missed the playoffs.
Cummings did not ignore the context. Mayfield lost Mike Evans and Chris Godwin to injury for long stretches, and he played through problems of his own, suiting up for all 17 games despite biceps, shoulder, knee and oblique ailments. Even so, Cummings drew a line.
“That regression was concerning enough that I think any ringing endorsements, like a top 100 grade, have to be on hold,” Cummings said.
That is the crux. Peer respect and metric-based grading measure different things. The NFL’s list rewards reputation and body of work. PFN’s process asks what Mayfield did on the field in 2025, and the second-half version did not clear the bar.
Baker Mayfield’s Path Back Runs Through His Contract Year
The route back is not complicated, because Mayfield has already walked it. His best PFN career grade came in 2024 at 86.1, fourth among all quarterbacks that season, built on a career-best 4,500 yards and 41 touchdowns. The ceiling is documented.
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“Baker Mayfield needs to prove he can right the ship before he can return to top 100 standing,” Cummings said. “But his best overall career score was fourth best in 2024 with a grade of 86.1. So he has the ability to get there if he can get back to full strength.”
The timing raises the stakes. Mayfield enters 2026 in the final year of the three-year, $100 million deal he signed in 2024, and an extension has stalled. He has said that if nothing gets done before training camp, talks pause until after the season. Tampa Bay’s front office has been public about wanting him long term, so the holdup is about price, not belief.
Now he does it without Evans, who left in free agency, leaning on a receiver room built around a healthy Chris Godwin and a rising Emeka Egbuka. The peers still believe, which is what No. 77 means. PFN wants proof first. Both positions hold until Mayfield settles it himself, and a contract year is the loudest possible place to do it.
