On a rain-soaked afternoon at Raymond James Stadium on Sunday, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers faced a turning point with just under six minutes left in regulation. New Orleans Saints quarterback Tyler Shough had scored on a 13-yard scramble a few minutes earlier to give the visiting team a 24-17 lead. The Bucs responded with a quick incursion deep into Saints territory and had a first-and-15 at the 22-yard line, going in.
Rookie wide receiver Emeka Egbuka ran a brilliant route, with a hard fake of an out to the right and then a cut back upfield that completely lost the nearest Saints defender. Egbuka was wide open as he reached the end zone and he turned to receive the pass from quarterback Baker Mayfield. To the dismay of the Raymond James Stadium crowd, the ball went through his hands and, a few plays later, the Buccaneers settled for a Chase McLaughlin field goal and a four-point deficit. They never got close to the Saints' end zone again.
It was not, by any means, an easy play for the 2025 first-round draft pick out of Ohio State. Mayfield delivered the pass on target but it was high and thrown hard. This was also three hours into a rainstorm and football was surely soaked. None of that mattered to Egbuka, a rookie of the year candidate who has been invaluable to an offense that has played most of the season without Mike Evans, Chris Godwin and Jalen McMillan.
"It's a huge honor to play for this team and be part of this brotherhood," said Egbuka after the game. "I can't help but feel like I let them down today. I'm on this team for one reason and it's to catch the ball and I didn't."
Of course, this was just one play in a game that also featured five failed fourth-down attempts by the Buccaneers offense and two long touchdown runs surrendered to Saints rookie quarterback Tyler Shough. It goes without saying that this missed connection between Mayfield and Egbuka did not lead to the Bucs' loss by itself. After the play, Mayfield made sure to buoy his rookie teammate on the sideline, knowing that there was still time for the Bucs to get the ball back and take another crack at the game-winning score. After all, Egbuka is the team's leading receiver in 2025 with 54 catches for 806 yards and six touchdowns, with multiple big plays in critical moments.
"Mek is a professional," said Mayfield. "Obviously, he's going to beat himself up about that. Afterwards I went up to him and told him, 'The ball is going to find you again in this two-minute drive when we get it back, so we're gonna need you.'"
As it turned out, the Bucs got the ball back just once more with less than two minutes to play and no timeouts. After two incompletions and a six-yard Mayfield scramble, the last-ditch effort ended on a fourth-down catch by tight end Cade Otton that came up inches short of moving the sticks. In this particular case, a big play from Egbuka didn't have a chance to materialize. There will almost surely be some big moments between the two over the fraught final month of the season, though, and Mayfield is not a fan of berating a player due to a dropped pass.
"It's just the nature of the game," he said. "Telling people to 'catch the ball' doesn't do anything. They're not trying to drop it, so I just [told] him to pick his head up. Stuff happens – we've gotta move forward [and] gotta play the next play."
