The Tampa Bay Buccaneers find themselves at 2-0 to start the 2024-25 NFL for the second straight year with Baker Mayfield at the helm as their quarterback. And Mayfield is seemingly quite confident that he can experience similar successes as Tom Brady did with the organization, but in a much different way.
Mayfield discussed the differences between himself and Brady as the leader of the Bucs, saying in a recent interview that it is a more “fun” environment now than it was when Brady was in town, calling him “high-strung”.
“The building was a little bit different with Tom in there. Obviously, playing-wise, Tom is different. He had everybody dialed in, high-strung environment, so I think everybody was pretty stressed out,”said Mayfield on the Casa De Klub podcast. “They wanted me to come in, be myself, bring the joy back to football for guys who weren’t having as much fun.”
Despite not playing on the team while Brady was around, Mayfield seemingly heard stories from teammates about the seven-time Super Bowl champion, saying that he heard that Brady had even thrown passes out of bounds on purpose whenever he didn’t get a play call he wanted.
“You hear some of the stories about if he didn’t like a certain play call and he didn’t like it throughout the week and they still call it in the game, there might have been a throwaway on purpose or throwing it at the running back or receiver’s feet,” Mayfield added. “There were a lot of mind games going on.”
While Mayfield may believe that he is perhaps a better leader than Brady was, he is still chasing the one thing that Brady was able to accomplish in Tampa, which is a Super Bowl championship.
Could this be the year that Mayfield wins his first Super Bowl? Only time will tell, but Mayfield seemingly believes that he has created the right environment to do so.
[Casa De Klub podcast on YouTube]
