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Popular Baker Mayfield celebration banned by NFL

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback will have to come up with another celebration.
River Wells|
Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Baker Mayfield celebrates the touchdown against the Jacksonville Jaguars.
Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Baker Mayfield celebrates the touchdown against the Jacksonville Jaguars. | Jeremy Reper-Imagn Images

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Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Celebrations are a big part of the fun in the NFL — no matter how much the NFL tries to stifle them.

There's been a variety of popular celebrations that have cropped up over the years, and the NFL has decided to crack down on certain ones. These tend to be violent gestures — miming gunfire, slashing a throat and others are typically frowned upon. But the NFL has turned its sights to one more celebration, and it'll affect Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Baker Mayfield, who frequently uses it.

The NFL put out a rules report as the owners meeting in Palm Beach is set to kick off at the end of the month, and among those rules was an update to unsportsmanlike conduct. The rules directory stated that a "nose wipe" gesture is now considered a violent gesture and will be flagged as such during the NFL season.

Mayfield employed this gesture quite often on first downs and big runs, as you can see below:

The gesture itself was popularized by Dallas Cowboys wide receiver CeeDee Lamb. The celebration has a few different meanings, but the phrase itself was in turn popularized by rappers like Young Thug and is slang for defeating or killing an enemy. That connotation is likely the cause of the ban, so players who use it will have to adjust accordingly.

Mayfield used it in a different connotation as a "slime me up" gesture. While we still don't know exactly what that means here at BucsGameday, we can infer from a Baker Mayfield answer on the subject that it's probably not safe for work, and not in the violent sense of the term.

At any rate, Mayfield is going to have to pivot to a new celebration. Given how fired up he is on game days and how much his teammates love playing with him, I'm sure he and the rest of the squad will think of something.

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River Wells
RIVER WELLS

River Wells is a sports journalist from St. Petersburg, Florida, who has covered the Tampa Bay Buccaneers since 2023. He graduated with a journalism degree from the University of Florida in 2021. You can follow him on Twitter @riverhwells.

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