When skill players want the football in their hands, inevitably some ninny will inquire: Are there enough footballs to go around? As if Wilson is going to run short. (The NFL version is made in Ada, Ohio, of course. Everything NFL seems to come back to Ohio. We are never short of footballs or opinions in the state that birthed the NFL.)
From Browns beat writers to the national pooh-bahs whom the team spoon feeds stories seeking the biggest, brightest spotlight, everyone seems focused on a similar question with a twist: Are there enough spotlights to go around?
Specifically, can quarterback Baker Mayfield and wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. not only co-exist, share, and prosper in the brightest of lights but also become big winners?
When the Browns, and Mayfield specifically, began to succeed in unprecedented ways after Beckham suffered a serious knee injury that sidelined him, it prompted an insidious question: Are the Browns better without Mayfield feeling obliged to look after OBJ as if he were Baker’s own baby boy or was Mayfield’s 2020 midseason turnaround from meh to good-to-great the result of becoming acclimated to Kevin Stefanski’s offense?
Make no mistake about this: Beckham can be, but has not recently been, a great player. He entered the NFL in 2014 and in his first three seasons almost singlehandedly seized the league his one-handed catches and star-power, heightened by playing in New York.
Beckham is an artist of great daring and sometimes spectacular results. The Browns got a glimpse of this against Dallas during the 2020 season. Beckham not only caught a red-zone touchdown pass from Mayfield of 4 yards, but also an opener of 37 from his LSU teammate and fellow receiver Jarvis Landry. The most memorable moment was not even a pass play. It was one of Stefanski’s surprises, a wide receiver-around pitch covering 50 yards and which the Cowboys could not have stopped with a lasso.
But, all that magic occurred before Beckham suffered an ACL injury that ended his season in the seventh game against Cincinnati. He was trying to chase down an interceptor. The deadly play might not have happened if, some say, Mayfield had not forced the ball to OBJ. While that may not be true, it is at least arguable.
Mayfield clearly wanted and, I suspect, still wants to get the ball to the receiver who can do the most with it on a team that has come to have a deep line of throw-worthy guys. The reason is simple: There is only one OBJ. He not only can take the ball to the end zone from the farthest reaches of the field but also rip the heart and will out of a foe.
On the football field he can be compared to some of the brightest lights from generations far removed from his own. My generation and earlier. That is why I choose examples not only those outside of football but also men who did not necessarily go by one name but could have among those of us of a certain age: Mikhail Baryshnikov, Karl Wallenda (and his family of daredevils who walked above us), and Evel Knievel.
Whereas Beckham’s stage has been a football field of grass, both real and ersatz, these comparative showmen worked in other milieu and, mostly, with more dangerous tools:
- Baryshnikov tread the hardwood of the world’s greatest ballet stages, but he might have been able to teach OBJ a thing or two about the toe tap.
- The Wallendas—originally known as The Great Wallendas and then The Flying Wallendas—worked a two-inch steel wire, without safety nets or harness. Their venues were everything from the circus to high over the Akron Rubber Bowl.
- Knievel may have been the ultimate stuntman. On various motorized vehicles—I considered them jet cycles—he would try to jumped anything: strings of cars end-to-end to bottomless canyons. I interviewed him once for a column and found him to be less full of himself than I had anticipated and almost
What is crazy is the excessive concern, national more than local, about how Mayfield and Beckham connect—or have failed to do so? Tony Grossi, dean of the Browns media, in making predictions for the 2021 season on The Land on Demand website allowed as how: “The key to the offense will be whether Mayfield and Odell Beckham Jr. find their missing chemistry.” Likewise, Akron Beacon Journal columnist Marla Ridenour wrote a thoughtful challenge of Cris Collinsworth’s on-air refutation of the idea that there is a disconnect between QB and wide receiver. Collinsworth knows something about both: He began as a quarterback at Florida and became a respected receiver for the Cincinnati Bengals before transitioning to analyst for NBC’s Sunday Night Football.
Though Grossi wrote that “there should be a grace period for Beckham” coming off his injury but also that “the Browns proved last year they can be prolific offensively without Beckham.” There have been connection problems between the two on the field. If, however, one reviews Beckham’s career, his best seasons were his first with the New York Giants. That’s when he built a reputation with catches that might have gotten a ring in the circus right below the Wallendas—if there were circuses anymore. “Give it four games,” Grossi suggested. “If things don’t look right in four games between Mayfield and Beckham, we’ll know the problem was real and not just a narrative.”
Even if the problem proves real, its causes must be assessed before blame is assigned. (And, of course, blame must be assigned, right? That’s football. That’s America 2021.) In a marriage, and that is what the relationship QB1 and WR1 is, even if untraditional, fault usually can be found on both sides.
Mayfield and Beckham both have said the right things and done the hard work together to steer right those of us more prone to believe what we see than what we’ve been told. Starting in Kansas City on Sunday, the spotlight will be on: What gives? For a Mayfield contract extension and/or an OBJ big-bucks Cleveland future, seeing will be believing.
NOTE: All of the enumerated Mayfield Memorandums can be found at: https://stevelovewriter.com/blog/
