Where does Baker Mayfield rank all-time among the Cleveland Browns quarterbacks?

The Cleveland Browns have ended the Baker Mayfield era after four years but where does he rank all time?

The Cleveland Browns have officially ended the Baker Mayfield era in Cleveland after just four years when they traded him to the Carolina Panthers for a conditional mid-to-late round draft pick. It was a sad ending for the former No.1 overall pick, who has seen the team drag his name through the mud countless times over the last half a year.

Was that deserved? No one can say for sure, as subterfuge is a prerequisite for NFL teams and players apparently. The truth doesn’t matter to either side, just perception. I don’t like perception, I like facts. So was Mayfield a bum who couldn’t hack in Cleveland? Far from it, actually.

Mayfield will go down as one of the franchises’ greatest quarterbacks, full stop. The only question is where does he fall on the list and how big is this list? Well, after crunching the numbers, I’ve found 11 players worth putting into the discussion of the greatest franchise quarterbacks ever based on performance, stats, and longevity.

No, this isn’t a list of NFL legends, but it’s the best the Browns have had since the creation of the team. Those 11 names in alphabetical order are;

• Derek Anderson
• Tim Couch
• Otto Graham
• Bernie Kosar
• Baker Mayfield
• Bill Nelsen
• Mike Phipps
• Milt Plum
• Frank Ryan
• Brian Sipe
• Vinny Testaverde

Over the course of this, we’re going to be assigning numerical values for every one of these Top 11 players. The top spot per cateogry gets 11 points, and every following spot gets one less point until the bottom, who will get one. There are six categories that are all stat-based. There is no opinion on assigning standings. These six categories represent the most influential stats that a quarterback can be judged on.

These are all stats, no personal opinion is infused into any of this. This will give us a fair, fact-based metric for where Baker Mayfield lists among the all-time greats.

It should be stated that all stats are just for that player’s tenure with the Cleveland Browns and not their careers outside of the city. Also, any Cleveland football stats from 1945 or earlier aren’t included, as that team, the Cleveland Rams, are now the Los Angeles Rams.

Yards Thrown

1. Brian Sipe – (23,713)
2. Otto Graham – (23,584)
3. Bernie Kosar – (21,904)
4. Baker Mayfield – (14,125)
5. Frank Ryan – (13,361)
6. Tim Couch  – (11,131)
7. Bill Nelsen  – (9,725)
8. Milt Plum  – (8,914)
9. Mike Phipps – (7,700)
10. Vinny Testaverde – (7,255)
11. Derek Anderson – (7,083)

This isn’t that surprising of a list. Brian Sipe and Otto Graham have the records for most games played as a quarterback for the Cleveland Browns, with Graham at 126 and Sipe at 126. It’d be easy to declare them the best just on their reputations alone but Sipe was an average NFL quarterback at best and while Graham’s legacy is impressive it’s also important to note that thrived in a running era with Jim Brown as his running back.

Times and expectations have changed, and most of Graham’s best years would see him get demoted in 2022. He never threw for 3,000 yards, never threw less than 10 interceptions in the same season he threw 20 touchdowns, and only completed 60% of his passes once.

It’s important to acknowledge that by modern standards he’s not up to par, while also pointing out that for his time he was very good. Yet, we can’t just assume he’d be better with modern training and preparation.

So it’s impossible to know if Sipe or Graham could hang out today.

That said, they have the most yards but Baker Mayfield was the fastest to 14,000 in franchise history. Had Mayfield played at the rate he was at for just another six years, he would’ve passed and shattered the franchise record and doing it 25+ fewer games.

Completion Percentage (Minimum 998 attempts)

1. Baker Mayfield – (61.6%)
2. Tim Couch – (59.8%)
3. Bernie Kosar – (58.8%)
4. Tied- Vinny Testaverde/Milt Plum  – (57.9%)
5. Brian Sipe – (56.5)
6. Otto Graham  – (55.8%)
7. Derek Anderson – (52.9)
8. Bill Nelsen  – (52.5)
9. Frank Ryan – (51.7)
10. Mike Phipps – (48.1)

Historical context is important. While you can argue Baker Mayfield wasn’t as good as Tom Brady, I would counter with “who is?” Mayfield is the all-time leader in pass completions in the history of the franchise. No one completed more passes against fewer attempts than Mayfield.

Now, with the same point from the previous page, it’s important to note that the expectation for completion percentage has gone up. Throwing 62% isn’t that impressive anymore. Not with how much more geared towards the offense the game has become.

According to Paul Domowitch of The 33rd Team, the average NFL completion in 2022 was 65.2, whereas 10 years ago, it was 60.1, 20 years ago it was 59.0, and 30 years ago it was 57.4. This is attributed to, in his opinion, the number of screens a team runs to their running back and receivers; plays he refers to simply as “Pct. Of Throws Behind LOS”.

Mayfield is on the bottom half of that list in attempts, hitting only 18th. Yet, he was 3rd in the NFL with 15% of his passes going for 20 yards or more. The fact that Kevin Stefanski didn’t utilize the screen more is proof that Stefanski never put Mayfield in a position to succeed. All of the best quarterbacks threw far more screens than Mayfield did according to Domowitch.

Touchdowns (Minimum 998 attempts)

1. Otto Graham – (174)
2. Brian Sipe  – (154)
3. Frank Ryan – (134)
4. Bernie Kosar  – (116)
5. Baker Mayfield – (92)
6. Bill Nelsen – (71)
7. Milt Plum  – (66)
8. Tim Couch  – (64)
9. Vinn Testaverde  – (47)
10. Derek Anderson – (46)
11. Mike Phipps – (40)

Baker Mayfield averaged more touchdowns over his 60 games (1.53 per game) than Brian Sipe, the franchise leader, did in his career (1.38). The only quarterback who threw more touchdowns per game is Frank Ryan, who averaged 1.59 touchdowns per game, and hit 134 in just 80 games.

Yet, Frank Ryan is what I like to call the Ricky Davis of the Browns. Ryan did achieve a faster rate of touchdown passes during his career than Mayfield. He threw over 20 times a game in the 1960s, a stupid amount, completing half of his passes and nearly doubled the number of interceptions as Mayfield.

A lot of Ryan’s stats were inflated by the number of times he threw for the era, not his abilities while throwing. If he was on a team that tried to negate his very low completion percentage or a huge number of turnovers, he wouldn’t have the same rate of touchdowns per pass.

He was just allowed to go out there and chuck, regardless of what happened.

Percentage of Interceptions When Passing (Minimum 998 attempts)

1. Bernie Kosar – (2.6)
2. Baker Mayfield – (2.9)
3. Milt Plum – (3.6)
4. Tim Couch – (3.9)
5. Vinny Testaverde  – (3.7)
6. Derek Anderson – (4.1)
7. Brian Sipe  – (4.3)
8. Frank Ryan  – (5.0)
9. Otto Graham – (5.1)
10. Bill Nelson – (5.4)
11. 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.

Winning Percentage (Minimum 50 starts)

1. Otto Graham – (81%)
2. Frank Ryan – (71.42%)
3. Bill Nelsen – (68%)
4. Milt Plum – (67.34%)
5. Brian Sipe – (50.89%)
6. Bernie Kosar – (50.96%)
7. Baker Mayfield – (49.12%)
8. Mike Phipps – (48.97%)
9. Tim Couch – (37.288%)

• Vinny Testaverde – (51.16%)
• Derek Anderson – (47.05%)

Now I debated putting this on the list, as a winning percentage really only measures a team’s performance, not a quarterback’s. This isn’t just in football either, as Major League Baseball has gotten away from judging players based on their wins and losses as well.

Both baseball and football are very team-oriented sports and conflating an entire team’s performance to a single player is a passe way of judging things. The same goes for goalies in hockey. The only team sport that thrives with individual stats like “winning percentage” is basketball, as one player can actually carry an entire team to a championship.

That’s not true in baseball or football. It’s a little true in hockey, usually with an elite goalie. Yet, even with an elite goalie, he can’t score goals (usually). So football is far more of a team sport than say basketball where a winning percentage for a player is more of a leading stat, rather than a misleading one.

Quarterback Rating (Minimum 998 Attempts)

1. Milt Plum – (89.9)
2. Baker Mayfield – (87.8)
3. Otto Graham – (86.6)
4. Bernie Kosar – (81.6)
5. Frank Ryan – (81.4)
6. Vinny Testaverde – (80.9)
7. Brian Sipe – (74.8)
8. Tim Couch – (75.1)
9. Nill Nelsen – (72.1)
10. Derek Anderson – (69.7)
11. Mike Phipps – (51.0)

Milt Plum really had a great five-year stretch in Cleveland, didn’t he? His post-Cleveland career in Detroit, not so much. Hopefully, Baker Mayfield avoids that same fate, but to see Mayfield among the top three with Plum, who was very good in Cleveland, and then Graham, the alleged Franchise greatest of all-timer, should put into preception how good Mayfield was for Cleveland.

While yes, Graham won titles, he and Mayfield have both never won a Super Bowl. It’s also not the same thing. Sure, it’s something to brag about as a fan, but there were only 13 teams in the league when the Browns were winning titles.

There are now 32. So No, it’s not the same thing. If the Browns of 2020 only had to worry about 12 other teams and one playoff game, they probably would’ve won the title that year. That’s not the way it works anymore and putting all the pressure on the quarterback for winning or not is a bald-faced lie.

It’s far more on the front office and coaching staff to get a team to the title game. Yet, that doesn’t make for great talking points on ESPN. A player can only do so much, it’s up to the coach to call the correct plays and up to the GM and President to make sure the team is ran smoothly and with the best players possible.

Where does Baker Mayfield rank overall?

If you assign a numerical value to each player’s standing historically in the above categories, categories I believe are the best barometer for performance, I think you get an accurate picture. If the top spot got 11 points in each category, with one fewer point for each descending player until you hit last, which got one point, here’s how the standings look;

1. Baker Mayfield and Bernie Kosar (51 points)
2. Otto Graham (50 points)
3. Brian Sipe (44 points)
4. Milt Plum (43 points)
5. Frank Ryan (39 points)
6. Tim Couch (35 points)
7. Bill Nelsen (28 points)
8. Vinny Testaverde (21 points)
9. Derek Anderson (16 points)
10. Mike Phipps (11 points)

Now, you’re welcome to go do the basic counting on your own, but Mayfield is the franchise leader in completion percentage and a top-two guy in fewest interceptions per pass attempts and quarterback rating.

You’re also welcome to go verify that yourself right here. This isn’t in dispute, Baker Mayfield is at the top of the pile in terms of production for a quarterback with the Cleveland Browns. If you want to assign “bonus points” for guys like Graham and Ryan for winning NFL titles, that’s all on you but I contest that any championship team is a by-product of coaching and team building and not an indictment or compliment of a quarterback.

After all, quarterbacks don’t play defense. So any team-oriented assessments like that aren’t factored into my evaluation. All that said, the Browns’ best quarterbacks based on stats and facts are Mayfield and Kosar. Which is somehow fitting.