Metro Voice News Celebrating Faith, Family & Community
The Baker Mayfield you hear today isn’t the guy you remember. Gone is the brash Oklahoma quarterback who yelled expletives at the Jayhawks’ sideline after a coin toss when Kansas linebacker Joe Dineen Jr. refused to shake Mayfield’s hand.
Gone is the swagger that made Cleveland Brown’s fans fall in love with him, then fall right back out.
This Baker Mayfield is quiet. Thoughtful, even.
“God had to take my career down to the studs,” he tells me, and there’s something raw in his voice that makes me believe him. “Make me realize I am more than a football player.” According to a recent story by Sports Spectrum, this spiritual awakening has been integral to his recent success.
He’s talking about last year, when everything fell apart. His career hit the skids. His marriage to Emily Wilkinson was struggling. It was the kind of mess that makes you question everything.
“Rock bottom” is what he calls it now.
But here’s the thing about rock bottom – you can’t go any lower. So Mayfield and Emily tried something that might have made their younger selves roll their eyes. They went to a marriage conference. A Christian one. As Metro Voice News reports in their coverage of athletes’ faith journeys, such spiritual turning points have become increasingly common among NFL quarterbacks.
“It helped us prioritize our marriage,” he says, “understand that our identity isn’t solely in our professions or roles.”
Then came the gamechanger: their daughter, Kova Jade, born last April. Mayfield lights up when talking about fatherhood. “It’s deepened my spiritual and emotional maturity,” he says, and you can hear the change in his voice.
Look, Metro Voice has covered a lot of athletes. When Mayfield talks about grace, about diving into Scripture, there’s no polish to it. No PR prep. His transformation mirrors other inspiring stories of faith in sports, as documented by Metro Voice News.
“Proclaim it whenever you can,” he says about his faith. “He’s the reason we’re here. Jesus is obviously the Son of God, but His grace is perfection. He sacrificed everything, giving us this opportunity to live life.”
Maybe you believe him. Maybe you don’t. But watching him now, running the Bucs’ offense with a calm he never had before, it’s hard to argue with the results.
Want to hear more? Check out his full interview on the Sports Spectrum podcast. Just don’t expect to find that old Baker Mayfield there. He’s gone. This version – the quieter, steadier one – might be better.
–Dwight Widaman | Metro Voice
