Todd Bowles says he'll decide Friday whether Baker Mayfield, back from a thumb injury that cost him three games, starts Sunday at the Carolina Panthers — or whether rookie Jalon Daniels gets another look. AccuScore ran the Tampa Bay Buccaneers' remaining schedule 50,000 times with each quarterback as the starter, everything else held identical, to see what the choice actually means.
Start with Sunday. At Carolina, the simulations give Mayfield an expected margin of -2.2 points. With Daniels, that expected margin drops to -6.6. That's part of a pattern: Mayfield's average expected margin across all 11 remaining games is -0.23 points per game, versus -4.56 for Daniels — a 4.33-point swing in the team's favor with Mayfield under center, repeated game after game down the stretch (at Chicago, at Detroit, at Baltimore all show bigger gaps with Daniels starting).
| With Mayfield | With Daniels | Change | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Projected wins | 6.4 | 5.01 | +1.39 |
| Playoff chance | 21.5% | 9.1% | +12.4 pts |
| Division chance | 17.1% | 7.2% | +9.9 pts |
| Conference win | 1.6% | 0.8% | +0.8 pts |
| Super Bowl win | 0.66% | 0.44% | +0.22 pts |
The division race shifts too. With Mayfield, Carolina still leads the NFC South at 53.7% to win it and 60% to make the playoffs, with Tampa Bay at 17.1%/21.5%. With Daniels starting instead, Carolina's numbers actually climb (59.5% division, 65.1% playoff) while Tampa Bay's fall to 7.2%/9.1% — the Panthers benefit directly from facing the Buccaneers' weaker option twice.
One caveat matters here: Daniels has three career starts, so his rating in this model rests on the thinnest sample of any player in this exercise. That's the input most likely to move. If Daniels plays well enough across more starts to raise his rating, the gap between these two scenarios would shrink — AccuScore only rates players on what they've actually done, not what they might do. For now, full season predictions and market comparisons are on the Market Index and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers team page.