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I worry that this trade will get graded better than the botched McCarron trade.

what happen to all the people that said can only build through draft??? when i was saying got to use both?

One of the things that most impressed me about BM last half of last season: Kid was spreading the ball around really, really well. That told me two things:

1. He was not married to one or two targets he trusted. Instead, he upped the games of all his receivers by being the one THEY could trust. That was huge. That one change totally flipped the QB/WR dynamic we've always seen in CLE. Before, fans needed to see WR's bail out mediocre QB's with circus catches to keep drives alive. Finally, we seem to have a QB who is elevating those around him.

That is 'culture-change' level stuff right there. Can't stress this enough.

2. He was really good at pre-snap reads and making adjustments post-snap.

Find Brian Baldinger's "Baker's Dozen" breakdown of Mayfield's top 13 throws of 2018. Like he said near the end of the clip, there are at least 20-30 additional plays that would make highlight reels, as well.

I think our effectiveness during the 2nd half of last season was mostly due to Baker's impressive ability to anticipate the open receiver, and just as importantly: throw open the right receiver.
Lots of his best plays came when he saw a covered WR with a clear path to daylight... and led him with the pass to the exact spot where only he could catch it. He 'threw them open.'

That is the kind of 'next-level' stuff that talking heads praise in guys like Brady and Brees. And kid was a 13- game rook.

Those attributes made us very unpredictable for DC's and very balanced in our attack. Bake complimented the WR's/TE's; the passing game threat opened lanes for Chubb. Chubb kept LB's honest which helped the short passing game.

Personally, I think the 'wide-open distribution' we saw in '18 is exactly Baker Mayfield's game. Big Dawgs is gonna eat, because Baker's innate style of play is crazy distribution. It's gonna be his hallmark... and it's gonna make this a team that wakes up weekly 'feeling dangerous.'

At this point, I'm not ready to borrow trouble where none yet exists. Locker room dynamics can always be a concern (or potential concern), but I'm actually pretty relaxed about it at present. Landry is heavily invested as a leader from last year (Still love that 'Hard Knocks' episode with him in the WR's room), Baker is galvanizing the O around his moxie and charisma, and a competent professional staff is in charge of putting them on the field.

I'm actually a touch more concerned about the guys who don't wear uniforms. Those guys on the field can only win if the coaches are a well-trained rowing crew, all oars in sync. And we have a really sketchy history when it comes to that stuff.

#TestBereaWaterSupply

.02

Nice post, but there are still some concerns w/the post-snap reads. He's kinda slow going through progressions. The OL did him a lot of favors.

However, you are completely right on the pre-snap reads. He wasn't very good right away, but the dude killed it on the pre-snap reads as the season progressed. I was--and am--very impressed.

I'm wondering how much thwt improves this year... hoping to see a big jump in his reading defenses this year.. not saying he was bad... but he gets a full offseason to get to work....

I think he's gonna be ok.

Tell you this- I haven't been this interested in CLE in a long lotta years. Even offseason has been fun this year.

https://247sports.com/nfl/cleveland-brow...bssportsapp.com

That was a good post, and Vers was right about the OL helping him out.

I liked your thought about Baker 'throwing them open'.

When you have a QB who produces, everyone works harder, plays harder and with more focus.

Lots of reasons to feel good.

Sweet! Name calling!

Same here

I don't disagree with you, but what I think Cap is saying (and I agree with) is that you first need to go through (and I hesitate calling it this for fear of derailing the thread) the "Sashi" phase. The tanking phase has to happen to load up on capital (draft and $$$) so you can pounce when the timing is right (the right draft prospects and/or a healthy FA year). You have to go through that in order to get to the "Dorsey" phase. Whether you do or don't have Dorsey is largely irrelevant if you don't give him the ammo to do his thing. We had back to back 1st picks... if we don't have that (which came from sucking and trading down in previous drafts) then I'd guess we only come away with 1 of Garrett, Baker, and Ward. Team looks very very different, in that case.


Add: we were impatient, but the Raiders and Giants seem even more so.

Tearing it down only works if all of the pieces fall in place to find the perfect person to use the ammunition you've accumulated.

But yeah, part of the plan was that Dorsey would be fired in Kansas City and he would be there for us to hire at just the right time. Miss Cleo told them so.

Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good.

I'm thinking about it a little bit more.

Seriously, it's a 2-step process. Without Sashi, Dorsey wouldn't have the ammo to go and get his guy, and the $$$ to pay people to come here. You think Dorsey would sign up for the front end of our rebuild? You think Sashi could make picks like Dorsey did? IMO, the answer to both those questions are 'No'.

Huh... I'll have to think about this more. It's interesting to think that we wouldn't be here right now without both Sashi and Dorsey being where they were, when they were.

That's a fine way to look at it if you think that going into the 2016 season that Dorsey would be sitting there unemployed. Nobody could have foreseen that to years before it happened.

I've watched this team screw up top draft picks year in and year out.Waste draft picks on QB after QB. You can have all the ammunition in the world but if you can't shoot that ammunition is pretty much useless if you can't shoot.

We were just lucky Dorsey was available and nobody could have predicted that when we went into this so called "process".

I guess if people think trading back and cutting most of your talent takes some special skill, we can give credit evenly. But most people know it takes a major talent to re-build a team to be a top contender in to off seasons. Those are not equal parts to a puzzle by any stretch.

Some of you still underrate how good Baker is... I love it. Not a knock on any of you, but I love that we have a very underrated quarterback still. There's going to be hiccups with rookie and young quarterbacks along the way... However, Baker was about as perfect as you can be for a rookie. His pre and post snap reads were actually really good. Do not be fooled. As Clem pointed out, you can watch Baldy's Breakdowns, the Bakers dozen and you'll see Baker was very very good.

The fake where he flipped the ball to himself was phenomenal. Sure he was helped by a very good offensive line, but Baker's pocket awareness is beyond anything we've seen in Cleveland in probably 30 years. Baker is an absolute stud.

People can say they still have questions about this or questions about that, I understand the skepticism, we're Browns fans afterall. He was the best quarterback to come out of college since Luck, and he's better than Luck. It's why he was the no-brainer #1 pick in the draft last season. He was THE franchise quarterback in the draft.

We are going to go far with this young man...as long as ownership doesn't screw it up.

I will give you props, device, on Baker. You may or may not remember, but he was not who I wanted us to draft. I also was not a fan of Ward at #4. This is why I am a software engineer and not making decisions for an NFL team.

To say I was pleased with Bake's play last year is an understatement. To say I am excited to continue to see him play is an understatement. To say I am happy he is the QB on my team is an understatement.

While I love the game and try to learn as much about it as I can, I am not one of these guys who can dissect plays and breakdown film. But, to my untrained eye, the one thing I (think I) noticed about Bake is a tendency to ignore an open guy 8 yards downfield in favor of a covered guy 30 yards downfield. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. But there are times when 8 yards is good.

I think that a lot of the time, those guys 8 yards down the field aren't as open as they look. If there are zone defenders in the general area waiting to jump outside routes, those can be riskier than they look at first blush. On the deep routes you don't have to worry about defenders coming from the opposite direction in most cases as the deepest guy is heading in the same general direction as the receiver and has his back to the QB.

Typically, you're at worst looking at the equivalent of an underwhelming punt on a deep shot. Misread a DB on an out route (or something underneath in traffic) and you can be looking at 6 the other way.

I wouldn't really call deep shots conservative, but in some ways they kind of can be.

I would say the difference here is the time the football is in the air. On an eight yard pass the ball is only in the air for less than a second unless it's on the outside. A defender almost has to read the route from the outset in order to react in time. With the long ball they have the time to read and react to the play for a much longer period of time.

It can work that way, but it depends on the position of the DB. Often they are playing the man rather than the ball/reading the QB on deep balls.

Most D's don't have their safeties 30 yards deep every play despite the way we saw Peppers deployed.

Yet completion percentages are so much higher on passes less than 10 yards than they are at passes over 20 yards I'm not quite sure of the point you're trying to make here.

There are worse things than incompletions.

While the risk of an incompletion might be higher on deep throws, the risk of a pick-6 is most likely much lower on deep shots than those throws less than 10 yards.

In a nutshell, a QB has to balance risk and reward.

I was just trying to give CapCity Dawg a different perspective on what he might be seeing.

Deeper pass attempts have a higher risk of interception. Deep attempts are intercepted 6.4% of the time, compared to only 1.8% for short attempts. Deep attempts certainly are riskier, but the risk of interception is already baked into the respective EPA values of deep and short attempts.

http://archive.advancedfootballanalytics.com/2010/09/deep-vs-short-passes.html

And this includes passes in the red zone with which the defense only has 20 yards or less of the field to protect. The red zone factor would make the short pass int. ratio higher if anything but obviously doesn't even come close to equaling the two out.

j/c:

I will bow out of this thread, but I want to reiterate what I said. I thought Baker did a great job of improving on the pre-snap reads but is still struggling a bit w/the post-snap reads. He missed seeing open receivers. I am positive of that.

I am not asking for anyone to believe me and I get it that it's not popular to dare criticize Baker in any way, shape, or form..........but, I know what I saw.

With that said, the guy excelled in a ton of areas and he was clearly the best rookie qb of the bunch. I think he has a real chance to be an excellent qb and I am glad Dorsey drafted him w/the first overall pick.

This is something I admired about Freddie's play calling last year... so many huge plays came on third and long. That incredible tight window TD to Landry, 50 yards in the air, came on 3rd and 17 against the Panthers. Higher risk of interception, but an interception is as good as a punt if it doesn't work out.

I've never really understood why teams run a draw on third and long rather than going 45 yards downfield with a pass.

Chapter Two:

Here is the Baldinger breakdown I mentioned. 9 well-spent minutes. If this doesn't excite you, someone should check your pulse.

To add, I think there's certainly a risk reward to Baker's quarterbacking. I don't think I'd consider "missing" the wide open underneath receiver as a misread. It's more of him knowing his deep guy is also open and that he's capable of making the catch. I suppose that is why some think baker will throw a lot of interceptions. I do think he is very aware of the defense and how and where to put the ball where only his receiver can get it. I think baker is more accurate than Favre so I don't think he will throw as many interceptions as Favre. I think baker will obviously force the ball sometimes but he is aware when to make that risky throw vs hitting the open guy underneath. I think he knows when and where his receivers are open at almost all times.

After years of sub-mediocre QB play, it feels like a luxury to be discussing the play of a CLE QB that doesn't involve the words 'dink' and 'dunk.'

I'm enjoying the helloutta BM's intermediate/long game. That stuff is exciting as hell to watch, and many of those passes are just plain beautiful.

This has been especially interesting for me because I don't follow college ball. I'd heard his name (like all the other QB's in his class), but didn't know anything about him 'til he got here. I'm forming my expectations purely on what he has shown me in his time as a Brown. I'm really, really enjoying this ride so far.

I love Baker for many reasons, but especially because he is a gunslinger.

It's crack to my eyeballs, brain, and heart.

This is the QB I have long desired but never had. Until now.

That's a real good analysis of what we watched last year. While I agree with Vers, and Baker definitely missed post-snap reads last year, I think there were a few times when he "forced the issue" for bigger plays down field. So, while you can say he's not a finished project, you can't argue the extent the game has slowed down for him. He didn't miss those plays, they were right in front of his face, he just opted for something more substantial.

As far as the INTs, oh, they will come. He has enough gunslinger mentality that they're inevitable, especially on an offense which will never be afraid of it's ability to keep leads or stay in tough games. We got really lucky with quite a few missed opportunities for opposing defenses last year... with potential INTs and Baker's fumbles we could have easily lost. Remember Bitonio's classic run? That was one such play. He doesn't recover, we don't score, could have been a much different game.

I do think there will be hiccups and/or bad games to come. I think that's inevitable. I will still hold strong that I don't think Mayfield will throw as many INTs as some may expect.

Crack to your eyeballs? Damn that was good.. I like that line

I wonder what the numbers look like if you take out Hail Marys from the deep attempts.


Link

It'd take a lot of work to break down the numbers on deep passes if you broke down the numbers based on where the deepest DB was in relation to the intended receiver when the ball was thrown, but I imagine the numbers would be skewed higher towards interceptions when defenses were in prevent.

In the end, risk vs. reward is a rather fluid thing for a QB. Baker seems to have been more right than wrong so far. Let's hope he keeps it up. Having OBJ shouldn't hurt. His ability to separate is pretty nice.

Well you can take those hail mary's and even them out by red zone plays. You have all 11 players on defense having to only cover 20 yards or less of the field. That would greatly make the short pass more risky.

I don't know how much more it could possibly take to show you how misguided the thought process is that says shorter passes are somehow more risky than short passes. It's not even close.

I mean this lightheartedly, but sometimes I get the impression that you like to argue for the sake of arguing. I suppose the same could be said for me.

Speaking in generalizations, shorter passes are safer than longer ones. There is, however, a wide variation in risk between passes within those categories.

Baker's done a good job of picking his spots.

As Vers mentioned, he does miss open guys at times, but (/and) even Brady does.

The initial discussion was about Baker taking deep shots over "safer" shorter throws. You can't take deep shots in the red zone, so I'm not really sure why you're bringing the stats there into the "argument."

Back to the initial observation-

I kind of wonder if Bakers height plays into his throw selection at times. You don't want to miss short throws high over the middle as that leads to tip drill situations. Driving the ball down over their OL can be difficult for shorter QBs. Having to find throwing lanes can complicate timing as well.

Baker has made it work, though.

I don't really like to argue. I do however sometimes get frustrated when people try to make obscure suggestions that have been solidly disproven.

There's overwhelming evidence that shorter passes are far safer than long passes. The jury is in and there's really no legitimate argument to the contrary.