TAMPA, Fla. — You were cheering, weren’t you? When Baker Mayfield spun out of the pocket, picked up a first down and tried to split two defenders with the end zone in sight, your pulse quickened and your blood pressure spiked. It’s okay, you can admit it.

Yes, yes, yes … NOOOOO!

Mayfield was stripped, the ball bounced into the end zone, the Bengals recovered.

It was, at once, an admirable and ill-advised moment by a quarterback who should know better.

And it was exactly why you both love and fear Baker Mayfield.

He will win football games through his sheer passion and audacity, but he’s going to lose some games for the very same reasons. He’s like the best friend who is the life of every party, but is also the reason you’re sitting in the back of a patrol car.

Let’s face it, Tampa Bay, we may have a codependency problem.

This isn’t anything new. Boldness has been part of Mayfield’s allure since he arrived in the NFL nine seasons ago.

He’s brash, but in a playful way. He’s smallish by NFL standards, but fearless and tough. It’s almost as if he was born too late because he would have been perfect in the no-holds-barred world of the 1960s and ‘70s NFL with Joe Namath and Sonny Jurgensen. They’re both Hall of Famers, by the way. They also had career records below .500.

It’s tempting to say that you can’t fault Mayfield for fighting for every yard during that second-quarter scramble on Sunday but the truth is you can fault him. Put in a similar situation later in the game, Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow found a huge gap up the middle but slid at the first sign of trouble. If you want to quibble, you could say the Bengals were held to a field goal on that drive. On the other hand, a field goal is better than turning the ball over in the end zone.

“He knows he’s got to take care of the football. We don’t want the turnovers, he doesn’t want them either,” head coach Todd Bowles said Monday. “We’ve got to get better at that and understand there are times you just have to get down. Understanding the play call and knowing when you’ve got the first down, knowing when the game’s on the line, and knowing when it’s not.”

That situational awareness is absolutely the key to Mayfield taking the next step in the quarterback hierarchy.

At the time of the fumble — Mayfield’s second of three on the day — the game was barely into the second quarter. The Buccaneers were trailing 14-3, but there was no urgency. When the play began, Tampa Bay had first-and-5 from the 12-yard line. Mayfield had already moved beyond the first-down markers on his scramble and could have slid at the 5 to put Tampa Bay in first and goal.

It was not the time for heroics. And it was not so late in the afternoon that risks had to be taken.

I don’t know if you would call it a trend, but there is some evidence that the bulk of Mayfield’s turnovers might be described as unforced errors. They’re not typically coming late in the fourth quarter when the Bucs are desperate to get back in the game or on third down when they’re staring at the possibility of punting.

Over the last two seasons, 59.2% of Mayfield’s interceptions have come in the first half of games. The rest of the NFL is at 44.2%.

Likewise, he throws more interceptions on second down than on third and fourth combined. It’s almost as if he’s hyper aware of protecting the ball in dire situations, but can get cocky or careless in more routine moments.

Maybe that’s a smallish sample size over the course of a longer NFL career, but it speaks to Mayfield taking risks in situations where risks might not be warranted. It’s almost like he’s the antithesis of his predecessor Tom Brady, whose sack and interception rates were significantly lower because he was fanatical about checking down or throwing the ball away rather than gambling unnecessarily.

The concern is that you do not want to take away the qualities that make Mayfield special. He brings fire to the huddle. He’s got 50-something players willing to follow him to doom and back because they see how much he cares and how badly he wants to win.

That edge Mayfield carries on the field is why the Bucs just guaranteed him another $110 million worth of paychecks.

But a quarterback’s role also carries tremendous responsibility.

And it is up to Mayfield to figure out the difference between playing full tilt and playing to win.

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