Should Buccaneers fans be concerned about Baker Mayfield's turnovers?

Baker Mayfield has played some incredible football for the Buccaneers in his first two seasons with the team. He's put up 81 total touchdowns since 2023 including the playoffs, which is the third most of any NFL quarterback, and the Bucs have won the NFC South in both years he's been at the helm. The team, coaching staff and fans all love him, and he seems to have revitalized his career in Tampa Bay.

That being said, there's one aspect of his game that doesn't seem to go away — ball security. Mayfield not only throws a lot of interceptions, but he also fumbles at a decent clip, too, and both those things can tremendously affect a quarterback's game. It's been a point of contention among Bucs fans attempting to evaluate Mayfield's play, with some believing them to be the biggest thing holding him back from a spot among the NFL's elite and others believing that the great parts of his play outweigh the bad ones.

So now, as Mayfield enters his third season in Tampa Bay, we'll pose a question: Should Bucs fans be concerned about Mayfield's repeated turnovers?

Why you should be

Well, to start, there's a lot of them.

Mayfield has thrown the most interceptions in the NFL since he got to Tampa Bay, putting up 26 (28, including playoffs). That isn't all, though — he's also tied with Lamar Jackson for the most fumbles in that timespan, putting up 21 (22 including playoffs, right behind Jackson at 23).

This trend continues if you look into some advanced metrics. Pro Football Focus has a stat it refers to as Turnover-Worthy Plays (TWP), which PFF describes as "a pass that has a high percentage chance to be intercepted or a poor job of taking care of the ball and fumbling." In 2024, Mayfield tied for the third-most turnover-worthy plays of any quarterback with 24 and had the fifth-highest percentage of turnover-worthy plays among all of his attempts at 3.3%. 2023 was much of the same, with Mayfield tied for second in TWP (26) and also had a 3.3% TWP%, though he was tied for eighth in 2023.

In regard to Mayfield's fumbles, some supporters may argue that he didn't lose very many of them. And that's true — of the 13 league-leading fumbles he had in 2024, he only lost two of them. That being said, those plays still can put up negative results, and he lost 18 yards on the eight recovered fumbles he had last year. Those things add up, and any fumble even recovered right where it fell could result in a burned down or the end of a drive.

All-in-all, Mayfield certainly has problems with ball security. An interception at the end of the team's Detroit Lions playoff game in the Divisional Round ended Tampa Bay's season in 2023, and a fumble during an exchange with Jalen McMillan on a jet sweep against the Washington Commanders during the Wild Card Round in 2024 was a huge swinging point in a game the Bucs eventually lost. Assigning individual blame and accounting for situational football could put turnovers like that in a different context, but the fact remains that there are a lot of them and it's something Mayfield needs to clean up if he wants to truly elevate his game.