For the past week, howls of rebuke aimed at Cleveland quarterback Baker Mayfield have rung out from sea to shining sea, from Gulf Coast to the Canadian Rockies, yes, located in the country to which a previous poor Browns’ imitation of a quarterback fled and failed yet again.
The pundits and, perhaps harshest of all, based on social media posts, fandom sound as if they want to strap Mayfield to a blocking dummy and place it between railroad tracks to await a train coming from nowhere and bound for nowhere. The outcry based on the injured Mayfield’s performance against Pittsburgh—two more damned interceptions—would lead one to believe he is the second and worse coming of Johnny Manziel. He is not.
Don’t buy that? Just another of Mayfield’s Touchdown Toadies defending the indefensible? Then pray tell why does the person who works closest with Mayfield, new offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt (ostensibly the Browns quarterbacks coach and a former NFL slinger himself), inform the football world concerning his primary charge: “I think the arrow is up for sure.”
Of course a coach in Van Pelt’s position should/must support his quarterback. But, it is difficult for good words to erase bad acts (those damnable turnovers, from misreads and sheer determination to make something good happen for his team that look like poor decisions). Head coach Kevin Stefanski brought Van Pelt to Cleveland to help him give Mayfield the coaching he did not have under Hue Jackson, Gregg Williams/Freddie Kitchens, and Solo Freddie. Who suffers most—I know, I know: long-suffering Browns fans—if Mayfield fails? The coaches and the man who chose Mayfield as the pick of the well-regarded quarterback class of the 2018 NFL Draft, general manager John Dorsey, already have been fired. Guess who’s next.
When Van Pelt and others drag out what sounds to critics like so many excuses—“we’re still very new in this system”—and remind observers of the Murder’s Row of quarterback-killers who have had their hands on Mayfield, in just his third season, already, no one wants to hear it. Think about who the Browns could get if they dump Mayfield and go QB shopping again. Mayfield is the 30th person to try his hand at starting quarterback for the New Browns.
Despite picking five quarterbacks in the first round of the draft—two with the very first pick, Tim Couch in 1999 and Mayfield in 2018—the New Browns have never gotten it right or simply have not had the patience to endure the hardships that can come before success. It is either difficult to determine with much certainty whether a great college quarterback can become an NFL franchise quarterback (one who takes his team to sustainable success if not Super Bowl titles, i.e. Bernie Kosar, an Old Brown who was essentially a first-round choice in the 1985 supplemental draft) . . . or impossible.
The decision-making timeline on players undermines patience—and a lack of patience has been the bane of countless New Browns managerial regimes since the team was reconstituted in 1999 following the Old Browns disappearing act to Baltimore to become, hark, the Ravens forevermore (?). The four-year rookie contracts of first-round draft choices can be extended by a year between the third and fourth seasons and almost always are for quarterbacks worth spit. This makes Year Three critical in the team’s decision process, especially so if the quarterback, like Mayfield, has had good moments (2018) and bad (2019). Alarms went off when against Indianapolis and Pittsburgh, Mayfield again began interceptions and his accuracy—high fastballs—deteriorated, as it had during the terrible turnover season of 2019.
The new Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) exacerbates the decision on Mayfield. Beginning with Mayfield’s 2018 class, the fifth year is fully guaranteed when it is exercised (by the first week of May 2021). According to ESPN writer Dan Graziano Mayfield’s 2022 option is likely to be worth $25 million to $26 million. That’s of lot of money to hand a quarterback about whom a team has its doubts. Previously, fifth-year options were “only guaranteed against injury until the start of the league years to which it applied.”
Struggling quarterbacks risk not only having their teams pass on the fifth-year option but also deciding to move on. Passing on the option is not the signal the team’s signal-caller wants to hear. Mayfield is not alone in this show-me-now or take-a-hike dilemma. Among the five quarterbacks taken in 2018’s first round, the situation of the New York Jets’ Sam Darnold (No. 3) most resembles Mayfield’s. The others range from sure-fire Lamar Jackson (No. 32) in Baltimore to bust Josh Rosen (No. 10), who doesn’t even have a fifth-year option opportunity. Arizona traded him to Miami and took Kyler Murray, Mayfield’s Heisman-Trophy successor at Oklahoma; Miami subsequently cut Rosen, who is now on Tampa Bay’s practice squad. His prospects are not bright. Hall of Famer Tom Brady could play until he is 70 and be better than what Rosen has shown. In the middle and improving is Buffalo’s Josh Allen, who did not have Mayfield’s pedigree coming out of Wyoming but is bigger and stronger, a better athlete.
This little review of the Class of ’18 reflects the difficulty in finding the right quarterback and should give even the NFL’s best talent evaluators pause. Will they recognize it when they see it? Could they do better with the next stab at it? Ozzie Newsome, the Browns Hall-of-Fame tight end who went on to an even more distinguished career as Baltimore general manager, as a gift to the Ravens before his retirement moved the team back into the first round and drafted the dual-threat whom doubters believed would never learn to throw well or survive as a running QB. He has done both.
So before the anger at Mayfield’s imperfections—and, yes, he has them—boils over and leads to a poor choice regarding his future, I would suggest the few remaining believers launch a Save Our Baker campaign—consider this the first volley—and pull that dummy off the tracks to nowhere. It seems not only advised with regards to the exercise of patience but also smarter and kinder than labeling him an SOB—in its more-used, off-color connotation.
