Will Baker Mayfield Throw More Interceptions This Year?

Entering the 2026 season, Baker Mayfield’s interception story has become its own storyline in Tampa: he cut interceptions in 2025, but a projection from Pro Football Focus suggests he could throw more picks this year—at the same time the Bucs hope a healthier

Baker Mayfield’s interception numbers don’t just live in box scores anymore. They’ve become the question hanging over Tampa’s 2026 offseason. sharpened by a simple contrast: Mayfield made it through 2025 with 11 interceptions. yet the Bucs never stopped needing more from an offense that didn’t make the postseason for the first time since he arrived.

That postseason miss stung. Mayfield is now entering a big year with Tampa Bay because it’s the final season of his deal—so every play matters, not just for wins, but for what comes next.

In his three seasons with the Bucs, he’s produced plenty when it comes to offense. In 2023, he threw for 4,044 yards, with 28 touchdowns and 10 interceptions. The 2024 season carried a different kind of weight: the Bucs won 10 games. the best year of his career. and he threw for 4. 500 yards with a completion percentage of 71.4 and 41 touchdowns. His biggest blemish that year was interceptions—16. the second-highest total of his career. tied for the league lead with Atlanta’s Kirk Cousins.

By the time 2025 arrived, Mayfield was openly working toward fixing the one thing that can’t be spun away: interceptions. He acknowledged going into the 2025 season that limiting them was a focus so he could keep the ball in Tampa Bay’s offense. He did it statistically—cutting to 11 interceptions.

But the interception conversation didn’t end there. The season also included six interceptions that were dropped and 20 throws that were considered turnover-worthy. His production in 2025 was described as average overall and his worst as a Bucs quarterback. with a completion percentage that fell to 63.2 and yardage dropping to 3. 693. along with 26 touchdown passes—all listed as the lowest numbers of his tenure.

Now the Bucs are heading into 2026 with a different pitch for him. The offense is expected to be healthier, especially on the offensive line. The roster also brings new weapons: running back Kenneth Gainwell and rookie receiver Ted Hurst. Mayfield is also working under a new offensive coordinator in Zac Robinson. a coach he already knows from his time with the Rams at the end of the 2022 season.

The hope is that Robinson can help the Bucs recapture the kind of offense they had in 2024 when Liam Coen was the coordinator. Coen and Robinson coached together in Los Angeles and are described as great friends off the field who talk all the time. If Tampa can get back to that form, the ceiling rises quickly.

But there’s a price fans can’t ignore: if interceptions rise with a more aggressive, higher-output offense, it could turn 2026 into another season of second-guessing.

That tension is exactly what Pro Football Focus brought into the conversation. In an article by Mark Chichester of Pro Football Focus. Mayfield is identified as a candidate for a quarterback likely to throw more interceptions this upcoming season. Chichester listed eight quarterbacks in the set. including Mayfield. and the piece leaned hard into the idea that interception totals can swing wildly based on more than just skill.

Chichester wrote: “Few quarterbacks in this dataset illustrate the volatility of interception luck more clearly than Mayfield. In 2019 with Cleveland. he finished as the second-unluckiest quarterback in football. with a net-luck figure of -8.1. throwing 21 interceptions on a passing profile the model projected to be closer to 13. Six years later, the variance swung dramatically in the opposite direction. Mayfield’s 2025 season ranked seventh among the luckiest quarterback seasons in the league. fueled by a turnover-worthy-throw-to-interception conversion rate of just 25.0% on 20 turnover-worthy throws. Defenders dropped six additional would-be interceptions, and Mayfield finished with 11 interceptions despite league-average outcomes projecting closer to 14.”.

Chichester continued: “The year-over-year swing was especially dramatic. Mayfield’s turnover-worthy-throw-to-interception conversion rate fell from 61.1% in 2024 to 25.0% in 2025, a drop of 36.1 percentage points that ranks among the 15 largest single-season swings in the entire dataset.”

The argument underneath those numbers is straightforward: interceptions don’t always rise and fall for the same reasons. Mayfield’s 2025 dip—down to 11 interceptions—could partly reflect outcomes like dropped would-be picks (six of them) and a conversion rate that ended up at 25.0% on 20 turnover-worthy throws. The projection. then. isn’t that Mayfield suddenly becomes riskier; it’s that the randomness of interception luck may not stay as favorable.

At the same time, the Bucs’ plan could tilt the math the other way. The factors listed include a fully healthy offensive line, a healthier Bucky Irving, and Kenneth Gainwell improving the ground game. If Tampa’s run game does what it’s supposed to do. it can change passing volume and how often defenses put themselves in position to bait interceptions—meaning Mayfield’s passing numbers. and potentially his turnover profile. could be affected.

None of this guarantees a spike. More interceptions for Mayfield doesn’t automatically mean the team fails. even if it’s the kind of headline Bucs fans don’t want. What matters is whether Tampa can build enough structure around him—health upfront. better balance in the run game. and a coordinator who understands the offense they’re trying to recreate—to make the quarterback’s decision-making more reliable.

There’s also a bigger off-field thread running through all of it: it’s still considered hard to believe this will be Mayfield’s last year with the Bucs. even though his contract is up. Both he and the team have expressed interest in a contract extension prior to the 2027 offseason. Whether that extension comes in August before the season or after the season remains to be seen.

For now, the one certainty is simpler: 2026 is shaping up to be entertaining. The Bucs want to turn back toward the 2024 form that came with 10 wins and 41 touchdowns. Mayfield wants to keep the ball away from trouble after years where interceptions swung from 10 in 2023 to 16 in 2024. then down to 11 in 2025. And PFF’s projection makes one thing clear—if the interceptions rise, it will be felt in every drive.

Baker Mayfield Tampa Bay Buccaneers interceptions Zac Robinson Liam Coen Kenneth Gainwell Ted Hurst Bucky Irving 2026 season Pro Football Focus