DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Pure Football Forum Will Baker Continue to Grow ?

Bingo. He’s just not good right now, that doesn’t mean he can’t be good.

Sando doesn’t have him anywhere. People in the league are surveyed and place him where they think he belongs. Sando just puts it in an article.

Honesty, Consistency, and Completeness Paramount in Discussing Baker Mayfield
It's perfectly fine to have a discussion about Cleveland Browns quarterback Baker Mayfield, as long as it's intellectually honest.

SAM PENIX

The current discourse surrounding Baker Mayfield is filled with dishonesty, inconsistency, and reductionism.

The Cleveland Browns may be 3-1, but they are winning in spite of quarterback Baker Mayfield, not because of him. He's played quite poorly overall over the past three weeks, and while the Browns won all three games, this is the same situation the team was in for the first chunk of the 2020 campaign. Only this time, certain excuses don't apply to Mayfield.

He's no longer adjusting to a brand-new offensive system coming off the COVID-19 offseason. And he is attempting to follow up a brilliant stretch to close off 2020, where, after Week 6, he was as good as any other passer in the NFL, and was truly elite from Week 13 on.

He looked fantastic against the Kansas City Chiefs, but his performance has plummeted since then, and while the stats may not look terrible, the film shows a player who looks uncomfortable, inconsistent, and perhaps most importantly, injured.


An ill-advised throw against the Houston Texans led to an interception and Mayfield suffered a shoulder injury while attempting to make the tackle. It was his left (non-throwing) shoulder, but that doesn't mean it doesn't affect his throwing ability.

As much as Kevin Stefanski, Mayfield, or "sources" want to suggest otherwise, the chances of Mayfield actually experiencing no pain, discomfort, or changes to his mechanics due to his shoulder injury are slim to none. The mere presence of the brace should be enough to disprove this talking point, but it's clear when watching the offense play that Stefanski is unable to call his full array of schemes. Rollouts, a staple of Mayfield's excellent play in 2020, have not disappeared from the playbook entirely, but they have been called noticeably less frequently since the injury.

If Stefanski is changing his offense, and Mayfield is struggling to throw the ball accurately, then maybe his shoulder is actually an issue. It's not an excuse; his pocket presence is poor right now, as are his lower body mechanics, and he isn't reading the field well. But it is one reason for this rut. One of many.

Here is a non-comprehensive list of some of the things affecting Mayfield right now:

Shoulder injury

Footwork

Pocket presence

Improper reads and unwillingness to take the easy throw

Lack of trust in Donovan Peoples-Jones and Anthony Schwartz

Continual implementation of Odell Beckham Jr.

Absence of Jarvis Landry

Starting left tackle Jedrick Wills Jr. playing on a bum ankle

Backup LT Chris Hubbard injured and inactive

Third and fourth-string LTs (Blake Hance and James Hudson) providing rough play

Wyatt Teller regressing to the mean

Jack Conklin reportedly playing hurt and is a shell of his typical All-Pro self

Uncharacteristic and seemingly random mistakes from the entire offense in key situations (4th down, for example)

These are not excuses. Mayfield's poor play is unacceptable, and is not the kind of performance that a player seeking $45 million-plus annually can afford to put up. It also doesn't mean he's a bust, that he shouldn't be extended, that he can't bounce back, or that he was never good.

Everything was lined up for Mayfield to play extremely well this season, and that's why it's so disappointing to see him struggle so badly; he had one of his worst outings as a pro against the Minnesota Vikings, missing throw after throw and costing Beckham a massive game.

Speaking of Beckham, the assertion that he is somehow responsible for Mayfield's poor play is asinine. There is a difference between correlation and causation, and Beckham does not have some mystical aura surrounding him that causes Mayfield to suddenly forget how to play quarterback when OBJ is on the field. All he does is get open at an extremely high rate. It's up to Mayfield to get him the ball.

Mayfield has not been inaccurate only when throwing to Beckham. He's missing everyone right now, and seems to be too eager to scramble, when he is far from a scrambling quarterback. He also does not trust his offensive line at the moment, as he is bailing from pockets and rolling to his right rather than stepping up and avoiding pressure from the pocket.

It was not so long ago that Mayfield was playing better football than he ever had in his life. That player did not just disappear, and he didn't just all of a sudden become bad for no apparent reason. It's fair to question whether he is a consistent enough passer to warrant a massive contract, but acting like he isn't capable of making just about every throw at a high level is just ignoring the truth.

One can be dissatisfied and concerned with Mayfield, while acknowledging there are plenty of reasons for his current situation and while having confidence he can and will overcome them. The first step is to get him healthy, and if that requires shutting him down for a game or two, so be it. The offense around the QB position is good enough to win with Case Keenum, and the defense has simply dominated the past two weeks.

Next, Mayfield needs to become comfortable in the pocket once again. And maybe that won't happen until his bookends are both healthy and playing like the great players they are.

He needs to fix is footwork and mechanics so he'll stop missing high, which is a phase he goes through every now and then. There isn't any reason to think that won't go away, either. It always has before.

Finally, Mayfield needs to read the field better. He's not seeing the open receiver, especially downfield, which is almost always Beckham. He isn't forcing the ball to Beckham or focusing on him too much, as many would assert; if that were the case, Mayfield's numbers would look significantly better, because despite garnering a great deal of attention, Beckham is still getting open as well as he ever has.

Let's be honest about what Mayfield has been over the past three games, and also about the player he has proven he can be. Let's be consistent about applying a standard to Mayfield, regardless of how well he actually has to play in order to win. And let's not reduce a complex problem with many different valuables down to an easy cop-out answer that isn't representative of what's actually happening.

https://www.si.com/nfl/browns/browns-mav...cy-completeness

That's certainly a very honest and spot on assessment.

J/C


All quarterbacks have crap games. All quarterbacks miss throws. And as one of his biggest fans, he flat out stunk Sunday. One game isn't going to change my stance on Baker.

As far as taking other quarterbacks over Baker, we should take just about 90% of the quarterbacks in the league based on Sunday's performance. Is he the worst under pressure? I don't think too many saw the Browns pressure Fields if they answer yes.

... if we're basing this off one game.

Regardless, the Browns still won. Which for some isn't good enough. We used to lose ugly and I'm happy to win ugly.

I'm not happy with Baker's performance. I'm sure he's not, OBJ is not, Coach Stefanski is not. However, he's our guy, and he's going to be our guy for a long long time. And I still firmly believe he will reach that elite status everyone covets. He's got what it takes.

It's the Joe Woods story all over again. Fickle fans who change depending on which way the wind is blowing at the time.

eh, not really fickle... it's just fans that want players to play to their abilities every time it matters. If people didn't know Baker can and SHOULD be so much better, it would be a bit different.

We'll see how the wind blows when he does play better. My point is that as soon as someone has a bad game or two the critics pile on. As soon as they have a good few games everything is peaches and cream. That's the very definition of fickle.

adjective

changing frequently, especially as regards one's loyalties, interests, or affection.

being critical when he plays bad and not being critical when things are going well is not being fickle. It's literally just calling it as it is.

If he's not playing to his abilities and expectations, then he has earned the criticism.
Fickle would be when nothing else changes, you flip back and forth as to whether or not he's good enough.

From reading the board it seems to me that more people have come to the conclusion he's not good enough after the last two games.

Heck, I've been critical of his performance. I think we are talking about two different groups of people here.

I agree Bone and Pitt. The critics always show up at the 1st sign of trouble.

I have never seen a QB yet though that didn't get criticized when they didn't perform up to snuff.

Even the GOAT has been written off a few times, so I kind of take it all with a grain of salt.

And let's face it the people on here know something, not nearly as much as they think BTW, but the folks that really know are handling this and if I was a betting man I would place a sizable bet on Baker bouncing back in a big way.

I feel this will be a big big motivator for him, and he loves to prove his critics wrong. Look out Bolts is all I will say...

Well done!

I've counted a grand total of 2 people (maybe 3) on here that have said anything beyond constructive criticism. Saying his performance over the past 2 weeks isn't going to cut it, and going into why said performance was bad isn't anywhere near over the top (IMO). It's earned criticism.

Baker has shown he can improve, and he's shown he can do so within the season. In fact, I think he's starting to develop a bit of a tendency to start the season slow/rough and iron things out over the first quarter of the season (or so). It happened in the Freddie year, and it happened like that last year.

That's constructive criticism.

Lol! If you're talking about my second post, and that's your definition of 'constructive criticism', then I I'm beginning to see the issue in these types of threads.

I've actually criticized his performance myself. That's not the issue.

well, then make the damn play, Bake.

If your footwork is fine, then why are your passes sailing high all season? Literally from Game 1, he's been sailing them high.

Ehh, it doesn't matter... just get it done.

We get plenty of that from Throw, don't ya think.....

He has the right approach. Don't make excuses and come out next game looking to bounce back. That's all you can really ask for.

I wonder if he's including weight distribution in his definition of "footwork"...because some of those throws I saw were when he was still distributing his weight on the back foot. You could tell the ball was going to sail as soon as he let it go.

R-E-L-A-X

Not sure what you are getting at with this one?

Baker will feel more comfortable in the Pocket, if Chris Hubbard gets back to health and helps out the OL around him.
Browns should hope for the long health and playing availability of Chris Hubbard.

I guess we live in a social media driven world now - so despite me preferring he just got on and did it, I guess I understand that this is a whole different generation. Having said that - I do love his attitude and grit.

One thing we know that Baker has always been really good at is spreading the ball around. Aside from maybe his rookie year where IIRC he worked the center of the field a lot, he's throwing to all areas and hitting quite a few different receivers.

The ability to do that and have that many people who can catch the ball has lead to a passing offense (until recently) that is controlled, efficient and difficult to predict.

But I'm starting to wonder if it might be prevent our passing game from being dominant? We don't have an established QB+WR or QB+TE pairing that we can reasonably and rightly predict will net a 100+ yrd pass catching day.

I'm not complaining. What we have now is massively better than what we've had before.

Last year. Njoku, Hooper, Landry Higgins DPJ.
5 ain't broken.

j/c

The Baker-Baker Paradox.

I was listening to the radio in the car the other day and I had to laugh ... they were talking about memory and how the brain works, and they have this thing called 'The Baker, baker paradox". Obviously we have a bit of a paradox with our Baker since at the moment we aren't sure which version will show up on Sunday ... And that's probably where the correlation ends but this was 2 days after Baker's woes against the Vikings so it made me chuckle and I figured I would share.

If anyone is interested:
https://medium.com/the-book-mechanic/the...ry-dab8c09ad9e4

The baker-Baker paradox is road-worn psychology test, where a group of test subjects is divided into two teams. There are many versions of this test, but they all work the same way. One group of test subjects is given the picture of a person’s face and told the person’s last name is Baker. The second group of test subjects is shown the same person’s face. This time, the group is told the person in the photo is a baker.
A few days later the two groups of test subjects are re-tested. The group given the photo-vocation combination had a much higher recall rate, remembering the person was a baker, than the abysmal results from the group who had to remember the person’s name was Baker.

Not a big fan of the social media and Instagram posts. Reeks of insecurity to me.

Just play better.

j/c:

j/c:



That's pretty good.

https://twitter.com/923TheFan/status/1446444164699279360

Lol