Baker Mayfield is winning in new ways this year. My colleague Adam Slivon detailed his uptick in deep passing returning his gunslinger moniker. But that isn’t the only way that he is creating big plays this year that differs from his 2023-2024 play. Baker has turned into one of the best second reaction playmakers in the NFL.

Now this isn’t something that has come out of nowhere. Baker has always had this tendency to try and create outside the pocket and has flashed some impressive plays dating back to his time at Oklahoma. But during his time in the NFL Mayfield has been unable to sustain those plays over an extended period of time.

Bucs QB Baker Mayfield – Photo by: USA Today

But something seems to be different this year. Mayfield’s play creation has been more stable. And if that is a real change that he can continue go forward it creates a higher ceiling for the franchise quarterback.

Baker Mayfield’s Pressure To Sack Ratio

Mayfield has only been sacked on 14.4% of his snaps where he has faced pressure this year per Pro Football Focus. That places him 12th in the NFL among qualified passers. If he maintains that rate it would be the lowest pressure to sack mark of his career. His previous low was 16.2% his rookie season and his career mark prior to this year was 21.9%. The difference between those two marks over the course of a season adds up – as many as 19 sacks worth of difference.

The big question is whether Mayfield can maintain his current streak of elusiveness. Including the playoffs, Mayfield has played 119 games to this point in his career. That creates 113 data points of 7-game stretches. Only 16 of those has he been able to keep his pressure to sack ratio at 15% or less. A quarter of those have come this year.

Bucs QB Baker Mayfield – Photo by: USA Today

History would say that this number will continue to rise back to his career levels. But there is a case to be made that Mayfield is fundamentally changed and that could mean he is operating at a different level when it comes to evading pressure. That change could correlate with the improvements he has shown in his rushing production.

Scrambles And Rushing Success

No quarterback this year has been more effective when scrambling to run than Baker. His 1.13 EPA/carry in such situations is better than Patrick Mahomes (0.50) and Josh Allen (0.86) along with every other qualifying quarterback. His 76.5% success rate is 3rd behind Spencer Rattler (81.3%) and Justin Herbert (80%) and his 9.53 yards per carry is behind just Herbert (10.85) and Lamar Jackson (10.00).

Mayfield has shown a predilection to get out of the pocket and try to make plays with his legs in years prior. But the book has always been that his decision-making wrote checks that his athleticism couldn’t really cash. His 4.84 second 40-yard time never screamed uber-athlete. And his explosivity testing – broad jump and vertical jump – both came in at under the 50th percentile for his position.

But an area we as a football society may have underestimated too much was that Mayfield tested well in the agilities. His 7-second 3-cone was in the 72nd percentile and his 4.28 second short shuttle was in the 65th percentile. And these are the skills he is often employing when he makes defenders miss in the open field. He’s not so much running away from would-be tacklers so much as he is finding ways to get around them.

Bucs QB Baker Mayfield – Photo by: USA Today

Through the first six weeks of this season Mayfield was averaging 3.7 carries and 26.3 yards per game. Both of these numbers are higher than his career averages entering this season – 3.0 and 11.4 respectively. His 7.2 yards per carry is nearly double his career average. And Baker isn’t benefitting from a single broken play where he picked up significant yardage. He is legitimately making defenders miss.

Take a guess at which quarterbacks are leading the league in missed tackles forced. Lamar Jackson and Jayden Daniels have been hurt. But other names may come front-of-mind. Jalen Hurts, Mahomes, Allen, Justin Fields, or rookie Jaxson Dart would all be fine answers. But all of them take a backseat to Mayfield’s league-leading 11. Likewise, his 50% missed tackle forced rate clears the next closest signal-caller by double. It’s unsustainably high. But that doesn’t mean that he can’t settle in as one of the better passers in the league at generating missed tackles.

And defensive coordinators are taking notice. Mayfield has not logged a carry over the past two weeks. Part of that may be attributed to the multiple injuries he is playing through – one to his knee and the other to his oblique. But it is also a derivative of defensive strategies changing to account for Mayfield’s effective scrambling. The Lions spied him throughout the game in week seven. That strategy was highly effective.

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It will be interesting to see how Mayfield will look after the bye week and how sustainable the rushing success is. Prior to this year his missed tackle forced rate was 11%. It seems counter-intuitive that a quarterback with limited athleticism can pick up this trait this late into his career.

Some may note that Mayfield was quite mobile in college. Many of his highlights from his days at Oklahoma when he won the Heisman trophy were of him breaking the pocket only to create yardage on the ground or launch a highlight-reel throw. I’m not discounting that at all. But his current level of production in these areas are even better than his college days. Baker averaged 5.2 yards per carry and forced a missed tackle about 18% of the time when he played amateur ball. And only once in his college career did he maintain a pressure to sack ratio less than 20%.

Bucs QB Baker Mayfield – Photo by: USA Today

A major part of the Baker for MVP narrative this year has been based on the back of his incredible scrambling ability. For him to continue to garner those MVP chants he would likely need to continue that level of scrambling success. Unfortunately, all signs point to his first six weeks of scrambling success to be a peak level of play rather than a new sustained level of talent. Could he keep it up for an entire season? It’s not impossible. But it’s unlikely.

There is a difference between what a player CAN do and what they CONSISTENTLY do. Baker can make jaw-dropping plays with his feet. He hasn’t consistently done that throughout his career. The odds that this will continue are quite low. But as Adam Slivon pointed out in the first chapter of this series, there are other sustainable areas that can help make up for this area regressing back towards the mean.