Pundits like Akbar Gbaja-Biamila, Stephen A. Smith and others are starting to write off Baker Mayfield, without looking at the bigger situation.
Baker Mayfield is not the problem. Mayfield is not the issue for the team, nor is he the person that the Browns need to worry about replacing. If pundits spent as much time looking at game film, evaluating rosters, and not falling into cliche statements, then maybe they’d be better at their jobs.
LIstening to Akbar Gbaja-Biamila, and Stephen A. Smith talk about how Baker Mayfield is a bum and needs to be tossed out or that he’s being coddled too much because he threw *gasp* 21 interceptions is the most ludicrous of takes ever to be spouted. It’s a tiring narrative spoken by a media that doesn’t have a clue about which hand to use when waving. It’s lunacy to think that a soon-to-be 25-year-old quarterback who has done nothing but defy the odds is somehow the problem and needs to be replaced.
Good golly, the number of myopic takes is maddening. The man is the second-fastest Browns QB to win 12 games since 1999. The fastest being Derek Anderson, and he won ten in one season, and only had three the next. Mayfield’s won six in two-straight. A modern-Browns record. Sadly. Look it up, no quarterback since 1999 has had consecutive seasons of winning six games.
It may not be much of a stat but that’s the bar. The sad thing is, if the pundits and talking heads spent as much time researching this sport as they do sitting in the makeup chair, they might actually have a clue about what they’re talking about.
Bad Pass Offense
Baker Mayfield had one healthy wide receiver to throw to the entire year, and that was Jarvis Landry. That’s the thing that always gets overlooked, who did Mayfield have to throw to? Landry and….a wounded and hurt Odell Beckham Jr.? That’s the big revelation people refuse to acknowledge, this team had only one reliable option all year. What was Mayfield supposed to do? Pull a Mr. Perfect and catch the passes himself? The Browns were 9th in the league for most dropped passes this year, tied at 19.
So you had an injured star and no reliable backups. Well the Browns had slot receivers, right? No, not really. Ricky Seals-Jones was third on the team in receiving yards for all wide-receivers. He was fifth on the team altogether. Want to know who the third and fourth leading receivers on the team were? Nick Chubb, and Kareem Hunt. Chubb isn’t known for his pass-catching skills, and Hunt only played in half the dang season.
Yet people are going to pretend that Mayfield was just somehow bad? What did he have to work with? Even the best offenses have three, four or five targets. Heck, think about the Greatest Show on Turf. Kurt Warner had FOUR wide-receivers to throw to, and a tight end, and two running backs. The best offenses aren’t built on the backs of one or two stars but on an entire offense. This was NOT a good offense. This team needs a lot of help.
Drafting a receiver and tight end need to be on the docket for this off-season.
Bad Blocking
Let’s not pretend that Baker Mayfield had all day to throw. Mayfield was on his back more times than an adult actress at work. Why wouldn’t that be the situation though? They gave up an All-Pro Super Bowl-winning offensive tackle, a former first-round offensive tackle who also won a Super Bowl, traded away an offensive tackle taken in the second round for a fifth-round pick in the 2021 draft, and only replaced them by looking at the scrap pile next to the stadium.
It’s not like the team keeps missing on linemen. Austin Corbett (the second-round pick who was traded for a fifth-round pick) started 7 of his 8 games for Los Angeles. If he was good enough for the Rams, he was more than good enough for the Browns. It’s not like the Browns were so deep at offensive guard that they could of let one of their young players go. After all, the team was terrible on the right side of the line.
Over the span of four years, the team has lost three All-Pro linemen, two of which are still active and highly productive, and two top draft picks. For what? Nothing. Hey, they replaced them though with a first-round bust who’s onto his third team, so the team is doing a-ok!
It’s sheer lunacy to think the team was going to be better when the team added a sixth player to the cast of departed lineman when they sent Kevin Zeitler over the Giants. Sure, Joe Thomas retired but you couldn’t find a way to keep other the other All-Pro’s on your team? At the very least, you didn’t have to trade away your young offensive linemen, who went on to start other places.
A Bad Play Caller
It’s good to avoid harping too much on the failings of a man. Hue Jackson and Freddie Kitchens aren’t bad people, they were just terrible hires. That’s it. Their legacy is not going to be tainted by their time in Cleveland. They simply did a bad job and that’s that.
That said, Kitchens was a horrid play-caller. The Browns became so simple to figure out that the opposing teams would stack nine in the box to stop Nick Chubb and then drop everyone into coverage to take away Jarvis Landry and Odell Beckham Jr. Which wasn’t hard, as Beckham was already a disaster in his own right.
When the offense became simplified, Mayfield had to force passes into tight coverage because he knew there wasn’t going to be better options down the road. There wasn’t a slot receiver worth his weight, they didn’t have a tight end to rely on as a security option and then the poor kid getting flattened like a pancake, forcing Joel Bitonio to hold up some fingers for Mayfield to count.
Slants didn’t work because the linebackers were staying home, the team rarely did play action to any effective measure (because teams didn’t fear the passing attack) and screens were blown up half-a-second into the play because no one could even get a chip block in.
Yet somehow, despite all this, it was Mayfield’s fault that the team only won six games? Peyton Manning threw 28 interceptions his rookie year and Drew Brees threw four more interceptions than touchdowns in his THIRD year, yet they’re sitting in the top five greatest quarterbacks of all time. Mayfield still threw more TD’s to INT’s and did it with no pass block worth a damn and one wide receiver. Yet he’s the one that needs to go?
Imagine how much worse this team would’ve looked if they had traded away that second-round pick (Chubb) for Jimmy Garopollo.