Where does Baker Mayfield rank all-time among the Cleveland Browns quarterbacks?
By Chad Porto
Percentage of Interceptions When Passing (Minimum 998 attempts)
- Bernie Kosar – (2.6)
- Baker Mayfield – (2.9)
- Milt Plum – (3.6)
- Tim Couch – (3.9)
- Vinny Testaverde – (3.7)
- Derek Anderson – (4.1)
- Brian Sipe – (4.3)
- Frank Ryan – (5.0)
- Otto Graham – (5.1)
- Bill Nelson – (5.4)
- Mike Phipps – (6.2)
The rate of interception is the same thing as the “Percentage of Interceptions when Passing”. The first is just what it is, the second is what Stats Reference refers to the stat. It means the same thing though; how many times did this dude throw it to the wrong team? As you can see the “best” quarterbacks in franchise history averaged much higher rates of interception than Baker Mayfield.
Mayfield only threw an interception 2.9% of the time. Yet, many fans seem to conflate his number of interceptions as being “bad” historically. It’s anything but. In fact, his number is comparable to Bernie Kosar, who while not a rocket launcher of a player, was very good at keeping turnovers way down.
What makes Mayfield more impressive than Kosar is Mayfield threw three more passes per game than Kosar did. Yes, Kosar played longer, threw more passes, and had more yards, but Mayfield threw more often than Kosar did during the first 60 games of their career. So not only was Mayfield putting the ball up more often than Kosar, he was only seeing a marginally more amount of turnovers.
If you look at Graham and Mayfield, Graham only three 702 more attempts than Mayfield historically, yet had 2.4x more interceptions than Mayfield. And Graham is considered the best quarterback in franchise history.