Buccaneers quarterback Baker Mayfield has a reputation for playing through anything. In 2025, he may have been playing through everything.
Retired Tampa Bay linebacker Lavonte David recently opened up about Baker’s many bumps and bruises during an appearance on The Arena.
“The season’s over now, I can talk about it,” David said, via JoeBucsFan.com. “Man, Baker was going through a lot, bro. Baker had a lot of injuries that you didn’t expect a quarterback to play through. You know what I’m saying? He had the oblique injury, he had the shoulder injury, he had a lot of things. You know, ankle injury, knee injury. . . . He was really trying to push through and really trying to be the player that we needed him to be.”
Mayfield started all 17 games. He was listed as questionable only twice. In Week 4, he was questionable with a right biceps injury. In Week 13, Mayfield was questionable with a left shoulder injury.
In all, Mayfield appeared on the injury report for 10 games: Week 3 (foot/toe), Week 4 (right biceps), Week 5 (right knee/biceps), Week 8 (knee), Week 10 (knee/oblique), Week 12 (illness), Week 13 (left shoulder), Week 14 (left shoulder), Week 15 (left shoulder), Week 18 (right shoulder/knee).
And that’s just the stuff that was listed. If he didn’t get treatment and/or otherwise kept it to himself (David mentioned an ankle injury that was never listed), it wouldn’t have been listed.
Bottom line? Mayfield is tough, determined, and able to play through injury. It gets potentially awkward if/when the team thinks a backup at 100 percent would be better than Mayfield at something less than that. If that question ever emerged for the Bucs in 2025, they did a very good job of keeping it quiet.
Defensive lineman Rakeem “Nacho” Nunez-Roches has agreed to a one-year deal to return to the Buccaneers, Rick Stroud of the Tampa Bay Times reports.
Nunez-Roches, 32, spent the past three seasons with the Giants.
In 2025, he played only nine games due to an ankle injury. Nunez-Roches still set a career-high with three sacks and made 23 tackles.
Nunez-Roches previously spent five seasons with the Bucs, playing 68 games with 22 starts from 2018-22. He won a Super Bowl ring when the Bucs won it all in the 2020 season.
The Chiefs made Nunez-Roches a sixth-round pick in 2015. He was in Kansas City for three seasons.
The Buccaneers began last season 5-1 and were 6-2 before their off week. It was all downhill from there.
Tampa Bay lost seven of its last nine games, finishing 8-9 and out of the postseason. It was the first time since 2020 the Bucs didn’t win the NFC South.
Todd Bowles, though, kept his job and will get a fifth season in Tampa.
At the NFL owners meetings this week, owner Joel Glazer gave Bowles a vote of confidence.
“I think we had some significant challenges we had to deal with last year,” Glazer said, via Matt Matera of the Pewter Report. “It was unfortunate down the stretch -- frustrating down the stretch -- but you see week in and week out, this team plays hard for Todd. Nobody lays down. You have the odd game where things don’t quite go your way, but every game until the final whistle, these players are fighting, fighting, fighting.”
Bowles is 35-33, and despite his three division titles, the Bucs have winning records in only two of his four seasons. They have double-digit wins just once since Bowles replaced Bruce Arians, who won the Super Bowl in 2020.
Glazer said no one wants to win more than Bowles.
“I’d say as a franchise, everybody’s goal is to win the Super Bowl every year,” Glazer said. “That’s your hope, but only one team does win the Super Bowl every year. In any given season you’ve got to look at the season, look at how things went, look at where the franchise is at, look at the totality of the situation as year in and year out. That’s how you evaluate things. Last season started out great – didn’t end so well. Obviously, we were disappointed. Obviously, our fans were disappointed, but there’s a little more to it.
“Every team has injuries, but there were significant injuries last year at significant positions. There were a lot of close games down the stretch that didn’t go our way. But we’re trying to build a championship team. You can try and throw a dart every year -- or you can try and build a Super Bowl winning team. We feel like we had a great team and we’re constantly building, building, building -- adding to the foundations that we have.”
Offseason programs will start getting underway around the NFL next week.
The ten teams that hired new coaches this offseason will be eligible to start working with their players on Monday, April 6. The Ravens are the only team that has set that as their first day of work while the Cardinals, Falcons, Bills, Browns, Raiders, Dolphins, Giants, Steelers and Titans have set Tuesday as their opening day.
All of those teams will also be able to hold a voluntary minicamp later in the spring. Every team is also scheduled to hold a rookie minicamp and a mandatory minicamp over the course of the next few months.
The first two weeks of work for all teams is limited to meetings, strength and conditioning, and physical rehabilitation only. The three-week second phase allows for on-field work, but no full-speed team drills while the third OTA phase allows for team drills, but there is no live contact allowed at any point in the offseason.
Most of the 22 teams with returning coaches will be opening their offseason programs on April 20 or 21. The Broncos have set May 4 as their first day.
Plenty of teams are looking to build new stadiums or renovate their current ones. Add the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to the list.
Via the Tampa Bay Times, the Buccaneers plan to meet next week with the Tampa Sports Authority to discuss a renovation of Raymond James Stadium. The project is expected to cost roughly $1 billion.
The facility opened in 1998. Ownership has said upgrades are needed to position Tampa to host another Super Bowl and/or the college football championship.
The report indicates that a full renovation would require the Buccaneers to spend a season elsewhere. The most likely destination is Orlando’s Camping World Stadium, which will accommodate the Jaguars in 2027.
Ultimately, the renovation comes down to whether and to what extent the state will pay for it, and whether and to what extent the Buccaneers will.
