Heisman Trophy winner and current Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Baker Mayfield opened up on faith, family, and career in a stunningly honest interview with Sports Spectrum this past week. In it, he shared how hitting “rock bottom” helped him realize he was more than just a football player and that there was so much more to life than throwing the pigskin.
Mayfield, who found collegiate success at Texas Tech as a walk-on, winning the Heisman Trophy in 2017 and going on to be the first pick on the NFL’s draft the a year later, played well enough early on but struggled to find a consistent home in the league. Struggles with the Cleveland Browns saw him get traded to the Carolina Panthers, who ultimately released him. He would go on to play for the Los Angeles Rams before winding up in Tampa Bay following Tom Brady’s retirement.
At the same time that he was bouncing around, Mayfield revealed that his marriage was also dealing with his own challenges. Between being unable to play at a high level consistently and navigate the relationship with his wife, Mayfield reflected on the circumstances in his life and used the opportunity to grow. It was a fitting attitude for the man who after high school walked on to Texas Tech rather than take a spot at a smaller program. Mayfield would become the first ever walk-on to win the prestigious Heisman Trophy award.
“God taught me a lesson,” the quarterback stated on the Sports Spectrum podcast as he opened up about his NFL ups and downs. He had to take my career down to the studs and make me realize that I’m more than a football player. There’s much more going on than the game of football. For me to see that, I had to hit rock bottom.” Adding insult to injury, Mayfield would later have to sue his own father over allegedly stealing $12 million from other business interests he had.
As Sports Illustrated wrote, though, the bottom was really hit when it wasn’t just quarterbacking and clicking with a team failed to materialized, it was that everything important in his life was becoming tough. “He revealed that his marriage wasn’t going well at the time and that he had unsuccessfully tried to have children, and when this happened along with the bumps in the road his career took, he turned to religion to help him through his struggles,” the sports journal said.
In another part of the March 21st Sports Spectrum podcast, Mayfield turned his attention towards his own faith and how powerful and comforting it is to have God in his corner. “Jesus is obviously the Son of God, but His grace is perfection, somebody that sacrificed everything, that gave us this opportunity to live life. And for me, when you say He’s your Lord and Savior, you proclaim it whenever you can,” Mayfield declared.
“But he’s the reason we’re here, and the story of Jesus walking among the flesh, the only perfect man and to to be sacrificed on the cross and die for our sins forever and when you accept that grace it’s an unbelievable feeling that then you dive into the word and you see the stories and the Scripture backs up what you’re saying, and the things that you go through, there’s whatever you’re going through, there’s something in Scripture that can help you out. And it’s, it’s been written, and it’s the truth you,” he added.
Take a look at the intensively honest clip where Mayfield fully embraces God’s grace below:
Featured images: Screen shot from embedded video, Sports Spectrum Podcast; Erik Drost, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons