Note: Turning the Cleveland Browns’ Season of Promise into one of super success depends on their quarterback, Baker Mayfield. It is always about the quarterback in the modern, pass-happy National Football League. There may be variants, including coaching, or, as the Browns’ Freddie Kitchens proved, lack thereof, but my deepest interest lies with the quarterback. So I am beginning The Mayfield Memorandum, a series of essays with an obvious common denominator.
This may or may not lead to a book of essays about quarterbacks I have admired, from near and afar, for more than their ability to spin a football. Ultimately my interest is in who they are, what they are, and how they have affected me and perhaps others. I started to write that book previously. It began with my friend and high school quarterback, KB Berry, and included two of the University of Oklahoma’s greatest pre-Mayfield quarterbacks, Jack Mildren and Steve Davis, both of whom ran much more than they threw and were principal reasons why Coach Barry Switzer is a legend. Those essays can be found in my memoir Football, Fast Friends, and Small Towns.
In each of these quarterbacks’ cases, their lives meant something beyond the fields on which they played. Mildren fathered Oklahoma’s version of the wishbone offense and his quarterbacking progeny, such as Davis, won national championships with it and became leaders in other fields. That’s my type of quarterback. I recently shared on my website blog and reposted on Facebook a lengthy serialized Fritz Pollard essay. It would be part my quarterback book, not only for Pollard’s play with the Akron Pros and other teams at the dawn of the NFL but also for his pioneering and lifelong commitment to NFL integration. (The Fritz Pollard Alliance works to identify and make teams aware of well-qualified minority coaches and key management personnel.)
Even if I never write that book, Mayfield possesses the fire, leadership, and more ability than detractors give him credit for—enough, I think, to renew a once proud franchise that in its reincarnation had become associated with the NFL dregs than its championships. That would be a gift not only to a city but also to all Northeast Ohio.
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The Mayfield Memorandum, No. 1: Baker Mayfield and other offensive starters who had not played or made only cameo appearances during this reduced NFL preseason not only survived but also prospered during the Browns’ 19-10 victory at the Atlanta Falcons. It makes me nervous when talk turns to Mayfield’s durability. Extrapolating from the fact that Mayfield has not suffered serious injury during his previous three seasons does mean he cannot. Since Coach Kevin Stefanski had been putting the health of key players such as Mayfield ahead of all other concerns, including preparation for the season by playing in an actual exhibition, seemed unnecessary risk.
But Mayfield “was excited to play.” Mayfield always is. It’s in his DNA. He understands the value of live action against an unfettered opponent. To feel ready for the real thing, it can be useful to lean into it. This is particularly true when the first regular-season opponent is the Kansas City Chiefs, the real thing. KC is only two seasons removed from a Super Bowl title and last year ended the Browns’ playoffs.
No one is saying that playing two series against one of the poorer teams in the NFL is the same as taking on the glorious Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs, but Mayfield now knows for a certainty, as should even his stubbornest critics, that he is indeed ready. After the fits and starts of the first series—it was his first—he was perfect. And it offered at least some reassurance that while one of his bugaboos—batted down passes—may require more work when playing future Jack-in-the-Box jumping defenses, it is not the fatal flaw that it can sometimes seem when the victim is a 6-foot-or-so quarterback.
Dean Pees, former Kent State University coach but more famously the architect of the Baltimore Ravens championship defenses, teaches his players that leap-and-swat can be nearly as effective as putting a quarterback on his back. The Falcons did not do the latter, thanks to the fact Stefanski put his first offensive line—save for center JC Tretter—in front of the precious quarterback that is No. 6. During the swat-a-fest first series, however, Tretter’s fill-in, Nick Harris, held on the first play to put his team in a hole, and later—sin of sins—right tackle Jedrick Wills Jr. committed a pre-snap penalty.
Mayfield had his moments, even in his 2-for-6, 43-yard, two bat-down start that included three consecutive incompletions. Most impressive was a 35-yard catch-and-run, quick out in the left flat to tight end Austin Hooper. Yes, it was aided by two Falcon defenders colliding like berserk circus clowns, but a year ago the tight ends, including Hooper, too often failed Mayfield. At Oklahoma, he used his tight ends like a surgeon uses a scalpel, especially when one of them was Mark Andrews, who gets to remind Mayfield twice a season with the Baltimore Ravens what a quarterback weapon a great tight end can be.
When Mayfield returned to the field for the Browns’ second offensive series, he not only started them on their way to victory but also did so in a manner that should strike fear into hearts of defensive opponents. It prompted Chris Collinsworth, former excellent NFL receiver and now an even better analyst for NBC’s Sunday Night Football, to warn that teams are going to have to consider Mayfield’s “rollout prowess” when defending against him and Browns instead of thinking he is not the threat in space that he is.
Mayfield faked defenders into flowing to the right as he reversed to the left, and pulled off a nifty little body contortion that allowed him to float the ball—no bat-down here—over linebacker Mykal Walker, who had knocked one down earlier. His ball floated 21 yards onto the outstretched fingertips of KhaDarel Hodge who found the goal line to conclude a 70-yard drive. Mayfield had gone 4-for-4 and earned a 158.3 passer rating that left him overall 6-of-10, 113 yards, 132.5, and with his first touchdown of 2021.
Mayfield sang Hodge’s praises, and Stefanski sang his. “I thought Baker was sharp,” he told the media. “I know our guys are ready,” Mayfield said.
And so is the guy—the QB.
