At the end of the day, it might not be the Buccaneers potentially franchise-tagging quarterback Baker Mayfield that could cause the Denver Broncos to miss out on the former #1 overall pick in NFL Free Agency. It might not be complications from the Russell Wilson contract or a lack of salary cap space. It might not even be a better offer from another team if Mayfield has options to weigh.
No, the thing that could end up preventing the Denver Broncos from signing Baker Mayfield in NFL Free Agency (if that's what they're motivated to do) might just be an incident from 11 years ago at Texas Tech involving a current -- and massively important -- Denver Broncos assistant coach, something that Mayfield certainly hasn't forgotten.
Detailed in a 2018 article on The Columbus Dispatch, Mayfield once had an awkward run-in with current Denver Broncos quarterbacks coach Davis Webb when the two were teammates at Texas Tech.
At the time, Webb was on scholarship and Mayfield was a walk-on. As Mayfield remembers it, Webb sent him to go fetch a towel during a rainy day at practice so the footballs could be dried off before he threw them.
""It was a Wednesday. I got out there and it started to sprinkle, and Davis yells at me to go grab him some towels because his footballs were going to get rained on, and he wouldn't be able to grip them.Baker Mayfield
And I kind of looked at him like, 'Are you kidding?'
And he said, 'Go get me some towels.' I looked at him and said, 'I don't know who you're talking to, but you're not asking me to go get towels.'
And then the strength coach walked out and he goes, 'You gonna let that walk-on talk to you like that?'
I looked at both of them, and that's when I realized, 'I'm going to do everything I can to take his job.'"
Mayfield did take his job that year, and became the Big 12 Freshman of the Year. But due to concerns over why he wasn't being offered a scholarship and the idea of a scholarship player like Webb getting preferential treatment, Mayfield transferred to Oklahoma and obviously became a Heisman winner and #1 overall pick in the 2018 NFL Draft.
Now, keep in mind -- this happened 11 years ago. There's no way Mayfield is still holding a grudge over this, right? There's no way Davis Webb still cares about losing that starting job in 2013, right?
You would certainly hope not. With millions of dollars and jobs now on the line as opposed to college clout, you would hope that these two guys can move beyond what happened at Texas Tech and work together if the Broncos would decide to pay Mayfield that kind of money. To have Davis Webb as his position coach all these years later would almost be something you could make into a movie.
It might be strange, but little things like this and the history people have with each other could make or break free agent deals. Again, you would hope that these guys have grown since they were 18 years old, and hopefully moved past it, but it wasn't something Mayfield had forgotten about as of the 2018 preseason.