History says the Cleveland Browns’ window to trade Baker Mayfield is about to slam shut
Baker Mayfield is done as a member of the Cleveland Browns. Everyone wants to move forward but Andrew Berry is dragging his feet. He’s only costing himself and the club future compensation by not moving Mayfield now. So why is he refusing to take the best offer available? Possibly because he thinks he can get a better deal down the line.
History tells us that’s just not likely to happen. See, Berry is holding out for a high pick and a sizeable amount of money taken off the Browns ledger this season. That’s not likely to happen. The best we know of was that the Carolina Panthers were willing to take on about $5 million, and give the Browns back a third-round pick.
Right now, that deal looks amazing. It’s a deal that will likely never be offered again. Why though? Historical precedents.
See, those who think Berry is playing four dimension chess cite five often regurgitated arguments for why it makes sense to hold onto Mayfield until the right deal comes along. Spoiler alert, that rarely ever happens.
These five arguments are;
- The Browns don’t need to worry about Mayfield’s salary.
- The Browns can just hold onto Mayfield and get a compensatory pick in the third round.
- A playoff team will be more willing to deal if their starting quarterback gets hurt mid-season.
- A bad team will be more open to upgrading if their starter is, well, bad.
- Andrew Berry will get the other team to take on more of the contract.
I’m about to bust the myth pertaining to every one of those arguments.
Now, let me be clear, I think the Browns can move Mayfield still, and get a shiny nice draft pick back, they’ll just have to eat a lot of his contract. Or, they can clear the books on Mayfield’s contract to a sizeable degree, but get very little in return.
They won’t both. Not at this point.
So why not? Let’s get into it.
The Cleveland Browns cap situation is hellacious.
One of the arguments that fans make about why the Cleveland Browns should hold onto Baker Mayfield and not eat a sizeable amount of cap space is that a team will come calling. Eventually. Sometime in October, more than likely, when forty different quarterbacks get hurt. Or something to that effect.
It’s a bad argument in general, but that’s going to be addressed later on. No, the reason why the Browns aren’t going to wait to trade Mayfield is that they can’t afford to financially. Andrew Berry is spending money like it’s somebody else’s, cus it is. The team, as of this writing, have just $7 million left to play with this season.
That’s it. You can try to go to some players, re-negotiate and lessen the cap burden by getting someone like Myles Garrett to re-work their contract, but all that does is delay when the money is owed against the cap, not get rid of the payment. No, the best option for relieving the cap issue is to either trade Mayfield or have him re-work his deal so he can be released.
The problem is that Mayfield isn’t restructuring his contract and nor should he. He’s earned every penny. A pro football player could take one hit and break his neck, so once a player gets the money, he should never give any of it back. For any reason. Tomorrow isn’t guaranteed in the NFL.
That, and there’s no reason for any player to ever take less money if a team wants to get rid of him.
As for trading Mayfield, the Browns aren’t going to be able to find someone willing to take on all $18 million, because every team in the NFL knows the Browns have no leverage. The Browns don’t want Mayfield, he no longer fits into the scheme they’re running, and they’re running out of money. No other team needs to make a move regarding Mayfield, except the Browns.
The Browns have to trade him or get nothing in return come the offseason.
Either the Browns take the $4-$5 million in relief now, or carry Mayfield out of stubborn pride, and hope that no one gets hurt on their end because they don’t have the salary cap to properly replace a player who goes down for the season.
Historical precedent says the Browns won’t get a compensatory pick
The whole “just wait until he signs elsewhere in 2023 and the Browns get a 3rd round pick” crowd is not going to like this part. If the Browns keep Mayfield, and he goes into free agency in 2023 having not played a single snap of the football in 2022, the Browns aren’t getting a third-round pick for Mayfield.
They’re probably not getting a sixth or seventh-round pick either.
See, compensatory picks don’t work like that. The NFL only gives out so many per year, and a player has to meet certain requirements for a team to get anything. The amount he played in the year before, his contract with his new team, how he ranks and fairs in comparison to other contracts of players in similar situations, etc all matter here.
It’s a mathematical formula. One that is extremely complicated. So basically if you were just in the crowd that said “just wait for the third!”, well you’ll be waiting forever, because not only would Mayfield not get the Browns a third-round pick in 2023 when he eventually signs elsewhere, the Browns may not get a single pick at all.
Not a third, or a fourth, or a fifth, or a sixth, or a seventh. The Browns are likely to get zero compensation for Mayfield, and there are historical precedents for that: Jamies Winston.
In 2019 Winston threw for 5,000+ yards, 30 touchdowns, and went 7-9 for Tampa Bay. He signed for one year, at $1.1 million with the Saints for the 2020 season. In return, the Buccaneers got nothing for him. Mayfield hasn’t played healthy since 2020. If he doesn’t play a single down for the Browns in 2022, that’s two years of no/unreliable tape on him, so there’s no reason to think he’d sign a huge deal in 2023. If that’s the case, there’s zero chance the Browns get anything for him. Winston played in 2019, Mayfield is looking like he won’t in 2022
Mayfield, as of right now, is nothing but a sunk cost. The Browns would be lucky to get that deal with the Panthers, where they were willing to eat $5 million on his deal. That isn’t going to be happening again. Not with how little leverage the Browns have.
Playoff teams rarely trade for starting quarterbacks after training camp
Now we move into the “a team will trade for him if their starter gets hurt” argument. Again, historically, that’s a lie. While yes, quarterbacks do get moved mid-season every so often, you’re looking more at guys like Jimmy Garoppolo, who was a backup, going to a losing team who was building for the future.
The 49ers had just one win when they landed Garoppolo and he only cost $385,919 against the cap to acquire him. Baker Mayfield at full value would cost more than $18 million unless the Browns eat most of his contract. No team is trading for Mayfield for that much, mid-season. Period.
More so, very few teams ever trade for starting-caliber quarterbacks midseason in general and then go on to have a winning season. Bobby Layne is the only starting quarterback who was traded during the season, threw for more than 2,000 yards, and ended up helping his team to a winning record.
In more modern times, Carson Palmer and Sam Bradford were both moved before either had played a single down of regular season football, and the teams that acquired them did not have winning records to close the year. Another example is from 1989 when Dallas sent former starter Steve Walsh to New Orleans three games into the 1990 season, Walsh hadn’t played a down yet that season. He went 6-5 in New Orleans. For some reason, the Saints gave up three picks, including a first, for Walsh.
That was a mistake.
There’s a good reason why starting-caliber quarterbacks don’t get moved mid-season, it just takes too long to integrate into a team. If you’re a team looking to compete, it makes more sense to try and use a guy who’s already on your team to fill the role, even if they aren’t as good as another option. They know the system and what’s expected, while the newer player will take weeks to learn, thus putting you further behind the eightball. This isn’t the NBA or MLB where there’s only so much to learn. A quarterback has to know everything.
More than likely what ends up happening is a quarterback gets called up, or a cheap backup is traded for to fill out the depth. The Steelers didn’t go get a veteran when Ben Roethlisberger got hurt in 2019. The Colts didn’t replace Peyton Manning in 2011 with a mid-season trade. The Patriots ran with Matt Cassel when Tom Brady got hurt.
Arguably the biggest name to be traded to a new team midseason over the last few years was Jacoby Brissett, a backup. When a playoff team loses their quarterback, historically, they don’t make mid-season moves and take the season as it is.
So if you want to trot out the argument that a playoff-caliber team would trade for Mayfield mid-season, keep in mind it doesn’t happen. All of the major movement by free-agent quarterbacks or quarterbacks traded, usually happens in March, ahead of the draft because it takes time to learn a new system.
Why would a playoff team give up anything to get Mayfield at that point in a season? If they lose their starter, they’ll need an instant replacement and a mid-season acquisition could see Mayfield take two or more weeks to be ready to play with just the barest of offensive plays to work with.
Losing teams would have no reason to give up draft capital for Baker Mayfield mid-season
We addressed what a playoff-caliber team usually does when they lose a quarterback to injury. It’s not trading for a starter. So if winning teams are out of the equation, what about the losing teams? There are two who are interested in Mayfield, Seattle, and Carolina with a third, Houston, making a lot of sense.
All three teams had losing records and aren’t expected to compete for the playoffs in 2022. Now, if a deal is done before training camp, that’s one thing. That’s what this whole thing is about, not that a trade isn’t possible, but that the window on the trade being realistic is closing fast. The Browns have about two months, maybe seven weeks if we’re being honest, to get a trade done. Anything beyond that is too hard to sell, because Mayfield needs to learn the system of whatever team he goes to, and few teams would be hard-pressed to accept possibly renting Mayfield for just a handful of weeks, considering his cost.
Why take a player who won’t be ready to contribute? It makes very little sense if you are coming off a losing season and looking at another one right after.
So when the season starts if the Browns still hadn’t traded Mayfield by then, there’s not going to be a market left for him. Let’s look at Jimmy Garoppolo. He didn’t arrive in San Francisco until Week 9 and wasn’t ready until Week 11. The 49ers acquired him for a 2nd round pick because they thought he was the quarterback of the future but he also only cost less than $400k against their cap. They knew they weren’t a playoff team and they didn’t rush Garoppolo out there when he arrived.
He was also highly in demand, because his limitations, which he has, hadn’t been exposed on tape yet. There was going to be a bidding war for him in free agency, and the 49ers wanted to make sure they got him before anyone else.
Mayfield isn’t coming in with the same level of hype as Garoppolo. So there’s no reason for a team to think they can’t land him as a free agent in 2023 instead. Why give up a draft pick to get a guy you can probably get for a relatively cheap deal as a free agent?
Teams trading quarterbacks historically eat a lot of the contract
The reason Mayfield hasn’t been moved yet is that Andrew Berry still thinks a team will take a big portion of his contract. When Carson Palmer was traded mid-season to Oakland, they only took on $2.5 million on his contract. The Raiders gave up a first and a conditional second, but Hue Jackson was their coach at the time and was the driving force behind the deal.
When Minnesota landed Sam Bradford, they only took on $7 million on their deal but gave up a whopping first-round pick for him. Like with Oakland, that was a mistake. Teams are smarter now than they were a decade ago. You aren’t likely to see teams give up that much for a damaged quarterback ever again.
The honeypot is dry.
Both Minnesota and Oakland were trying to compete in the years they acquired their respective quarterbacks. Neither ended up having a winning record with them, and both trades set their respective teams back considerably.
So this notion that Mayfield would buck historical trends and land on a team, mid-season, for a decent pick and a large chunk of the money absorbed is a fallacy. The Browns might get a third, hell, even a second-round pick for Mayfield if he’s traded sooner rather than later, but that’s going to see the Browns eat $13+ million.
That’s the historical trend.
Right now, the rumbling before the draft was that Mayfield was going for a third. That draft number is likely to fall further and further down the longer the Browns wait. They’re not carrying Mayfield on the roster, and risk cutting a player they may need. The time is ticking.