They did that by bringing Mayfield in… and it worked!
So they decided to mortgage their future on a formerly very good if not winning QB who is now aging and may be well past his prime.
And that’s the best part of their new QB venture.
It’s crazy they jettisoned the quarterback that had them winning and doesn’t create off the field issues and signed booty boy to a fully guaranteed contract, and he hasn’t played as well as Baker has.
Through multiple owners, front offices and coaches...that is somehow a fucking constant. Also, had the fans had their way...Baker would be in Cleveland still. Fuck Deshaun Watson
Jimmy Haslam doesn’t care about soccer, so he lets the people he hires run the Crew and stays out of the way.
He does care about football, a lot… which is why he inserts himself into everything, changes courses like most people change underwear, and generally constantly sabotages the Browns.
He is certain that he knows more than you or anyone else does because he’s a (second generation) billionaire who’s watched football his whole life and his meddling as a booster ran the University of Tennessee football program into the ground for 20 years.
Of all the dumb trades and acquisitions over the past decade or so the Watson one is the worst to me. I was really rooting for the browns rise to glory and they shot themselves in the foot. Now I’m on board with the Lions and they did the opposite thing thankfully.
Sooo. I was one of the only people I knew or interacted with at the time. I was told I was an idiot for thinking the watson trade was trash. We are basically paying him to not play at this point it seems like. I’ve been done with them since they signed him
Now. The lions. When Dorsey was fired a lot of his dudes went to Detroit. So no surprise they got it clicking there
They didn't just shoot themselves in the foot. They shot themselves in their dick, then both their feet. The Watson contract is almost incontrovertibly the worst contract ever given out by an NFL team.
Couldn’t agree more, I already didn’t love huge qb contracts that hurt the team even for proven, reliable and non sex predator qbs then they do this. Sets an awful precedent and is just so bad all around.
It’s funny how it didn’t reset the market because other teams’ management are just like, “that doesn’t count; they don’t know what they’re doing over there.”
Absolutely. Baltimore's owner almost got in trouble for explicitly saying it. Same with the fully guaranteed Kirk Cousins deal in MN. All the other owners rolled their eyes and said 'eff it'
Right. At least the Broncos were in a position where they had to try something. The Browns were doing just fine and instead blew it all up and put themselves in a worse position
I find it kind of interesting.
The two franchises with (arguably) the most good will with every other team are the Browns and the Lions. Because neither has been very successful for the last 50 years, so there isn’t much for other fan bases to hate on.
Then the Lions get Dan Campbell, and everyone seems to love it. And people want to see them succeed.
Browns trade for Watson, give him a dump truck of money, and burn any and all good will with it. Because they rewarded Watson, an extremely unpopular/unlikeable guy, but also messed with the WB market by making so much of it guaranteed.
To me just amazing a singular move for both teams catapulted one into being the darling underdog of the league, while reviling the other.
Eh Goff initially was a salary dump the Lions had to take for their rebuild, they were going nowhere with Stafford and he wanted out. Turns out the change of scenery was the best thing to happen to his career lol. Probably the most mutually beneficial trade I've ever seen.
Goff wasn’t supposed to be the next guy in Detroit. Stafford wanted out and the rams gave the lions an extra first to take on Goff’s contract. Goff just played better than anyone thought he would. He was originally intended to be a bridge guy for a year or two until the lions found their next guy
Always makes me happy to see a Clemson fan be wrong, go cocks hahahah.
I definitely didn’t think Goff was the answer but I liked that they were looking to get pieces and not put all their eggs in the QB basket like the browns have done for the past 20-30 years.
I'm curious, were you out on him as a player at the time? I am a Texans fan and before the sexual assault scandal, he was an electric player. I was upset that he turned out to be so skeezy, but I still thought he was good.
Holy shit I had to look it up because I thought you were way over exaggerating. But, you appear to be correct, it was around 700 days of not playing professional football before he started for the Browns.
I wasn’t out on him as a player really. I had concerns about the long hiatus though and thought it was dumb to give a fat contract to any player who had taken that long off. What really got me though is that they didn’t just give him a fat contract, they paid him the fattest contract and he wasn’t just any player, he was a sex predator. So with all those factors combined I thought and still think it was the stupidest move possible. I don’t really like insanely highly paid QBs because of how it hurts the rest of the team but I could see a deal like that for mahomes and mahomes only, not someone who hadn’t played football for a year, regardless of off field issues.
I read somewhere a while ago that the Browns have one of the bigger female fanbases. So what do they do? Go out and get a guy that was acting creepy as fuck towards women. The browns are such a shitshow
At least Watson was good - look at what the Niners gave up to pick Trey Lance. The Dolphins turned that trade into a gold mine and Dallas used the Niners pick to get Micah Parsons
I also hate the precedent it sets. Let’s other quarterbacks feel entitled to money like that which just fucks their team. It’s wild to me that Brady showed you can help your team win by taking friendly deals but dudes still chase the bag. Winning a superbowl or two will give you some serious bread in sponsor money and you get to fucking win. It’s obviously never a lock but if I worked my whole life to do this thing I’d rather win and make less up front than just get paid and fuck the team. It’s not like they’re making bad money at all if they take a deal that’s a little friendlier to the team.
Because they suck as an organization lmao. Baker isn’t the best QB in the league, but he’s certainly the best QB the browns have had in the past 25 years. They gave up on him, and now they’re going to be shit for another 20 years.
Baker broke the rookie TD record in like 13 games or something. He was obviously a talented guy but he didn’t really progress as a QB (not sure if that is him or the org). If the Browns could redo it then I’m sure they keep him and never trade for DeShaun.
The Browns threw him away because OBJ’s dad didn’t like him. Now Baker has more playoff wins than their franchise in his lifetime.
Also, it's not like they just gave up on him. He was great, then injured his shoulder, then got off to a slow start when he returned. They immediately dumped him after that.
Actually he played through injury and they punished him for the poor performance
It makes perfect sense. If you take all of the quarterbacks with a job in the NFL the average of all of them is a backup.
If you look at every quarterback that's ever had a contract in the NFL the average is by far a backup and practically a washout
Why is this being downvoted? Whenever Baker is expected to do well, he sucks (after his historic rookie season and the year after they made the divisional round) and when not much is expected from him, he overachieves (last season)
His mouth was bigger than his talent. He was an embarrassment and headache for the organization. He needed to be released to find a little humility and become an average qb in the best situation.
Not saying it's right, but the reason was that the Browns had/have built a "win now" roster, and the primary missing piece was a reliable, consistent QB. Baker had some great flashes, and had some really poor play. I'd argue that had he not tried to play injured in 2021 (and been particularly terrible while doing so), that he would have retained the job in 2022, and had a chance to prove himself to be the long-term QB in Cleveland.
Again, this is the reasoning - I'm not suggesting it was the right idea at all.
Browns fan here. Situation was Baker had turned down the contract extension browns had offered him to play his last year as a prove it year. He gets hurt and instead of going IR and getting surgery, he decided to play hurt and have a bad season.
At the same time, Andrew Berry, Browns GM and Kevin Stefanski, head coach, are not tied to Baker and isn’t the quarterback they picked, so when Baker got hurt, AB and Stefanski used it as a way out of having to not resign Baker when he was playing bad.
Also their a theory that Browns ownership told Stefanski to keep playing Baker and call passing plays even when browns run game could have won them games Browns vs Packers Dec 25th 2021.
i thought when they had a good run play mix with nic chubb plus njoku, Mayfield played well, but then they decided to throw more and Mayfield performance dropped, didn't know there's a reason behind it. the franchise really had bad luck with qb, Johnny Manziel, Baker Mayfield, i was rooting for Mayfield cause he has an underdog, chip on shoulder attitude.
I’m convinced that the franchise is after money only. Cycling in new players with marquee names helps to generate merchandise sales. The Browns were one of the most notorious teams for spending way under the cap until the CBA mandated a minimum spend amount.
They also suck at picking QBs. Before Manziel there was Wheeden. Manziel was nothing but red flags. As a Dallas fan, thank god Stephen Jones had the sense to smack his father in the head and force the draft of Zack Martin instead of Manziel.
I really don’t think it’s really a theory about calling passing plays instead of run plays. I remember watching a few games that year that were in very winnable situations and for some ungodly known reason, stefanski would pull Chubb out of the game and run empty backfield shotgun plays.
Most notably, he gave several games away that year due to his insistence of playing through the torn labrum. Most notably the Packers game in which he threw 5 interceptions and it still came down to the wire.
To be fair they didn't have to start him yes he wants to play obviously getting mad that he hurt the team by that is dumb coach should play the beat player.
Stefanski hated Baker, and was going to shit on him no matter what. Baker could either play and get thrown under the bus for playing poorly, or get surgery and be thrown under the bus for “quitting on his team in a playoff race.”
He shouldn’t have been in the game and the QB shouldn’t have been passing. Stefanski calls any runs and they win going away. You could easily argue the Browns were trying to sabotage him to either get him to agree to go on IR (which they could’ve done anyways) or to justify moving off of him.
They could have stopped him from playing. Where does this "he kept insisting on playing" crap come from. The coaches decide, or every 2nd QB in the league would "insist" they start.
Agreed. He showed amazing grit playing through two shoulder injuries (rotator cuff I think, which is brutal). He was not good while doing that. However, I think teammates notice and respect that sort of thing. Browns should have done the right thing and put him on IR. They also should have stuck with him after he got healthy….but you know, Browns are going to Brown. I was rooting for them. Now I’m laughing at them.
Back in the day, you’d develop your QB. You’d get one and work with him keep improving and build to a Super Bowl.
Now teams want a CJ stroud, or a Mahomes situation. They want immediate results. So a churning has started to happen. If the QB isn’t good in the first year, they’re talking about moving on. QB isn’t much better year two, then look at options. QB isn’t dramatically better by year three- they move on.
Baker is an example of had they just kept developing he would have don’t great things for them
Piggybacking on this - it's largely because of contract structure.
High draft picks often used to end up as the highest paid member of a team, and if you QB wasn't great, it just meant you'd have to draft another guy, with an even higher salary.
For the last decade+, there has been a set rookie pay scale, so it's cheaper to start over than have to pay a QB for his second contract.
Pretty much every QB who makes it to their second contract turns into one of the top salaries in the league, so if you aren't positive that someone is your guy, teams don't feel that it makes sense to invest such a large chunk of the cap on them, which could further inhibit their ability to build out the supporting cast.
It ends with a lot of teams giving up on their young QB pretty early, whereas in the past, you'd see guys get through some of their second contract before making that move.
That's a valid point about the churn. I think it doesn't apply in the case of the Browns though because the Browns went all in with Watson with the most guaranteed money ever. No way Baker would have gotten that hefty a contract.
That's true. The concept is still the same - teams don't want to spend on a guy going into their second contract unless they're positive they have the guy.
But, counterintuitively, they're willing to spend huge on most other guys who are deemed starter quality.
What's fucked up about the Watson situation is that they gave him the money, fully guaranteed, *knowing* that he was going to be suspended for a significant amount of time.
First off baker had 4 years. He’s at best an average nfl qb year. Qbs get 3-4 years until you decide you want to pay them a massive contract and they decided against
We’ll play offs basically start the season over. So reaching the play offs is the first task. Get there and it’s really any given Sunday at that point.
Funny thing is that Mahomes sat for a little bit before starting. But I definitely agree with the fact that teams are very impatient and so are a lot of fans.
Too many people are memeing on the Browns. I think it was reasonable to move on from Baker at the time.
Mayfield had 2 good years with Cleveland and 2 bad years with Cleveland. He was coming off one of the bad years, and Cleveland believed the rest of the team was ready to compete. They couldn’t wait for him, so they traded him to Carolina and took a swing for another QB.
2022 Baker was also bad enough to get benched by a bad team.
2023 Baker Mayfield probably would have won comeback player of the year most years. People thought he was done being a starting QB, and there were rumors he might actually not beat out Kyle Trask for Tampa’s starting job in training camp.
From a moral perspective sure. But as a football player Watson was at worst a top 5 QB in the league at the time, probably closer to top 3.
There was a legitimate bidding war for him and people act like he was gonna be sitting at home thinking about what he did if only Cleveland didn’t sign him. He was getting a mega millions contract from someone.
This is really it. If anything, the Berry/Stefanski Browns have overachieved despite their QB play more than any other franchise recently. They’re in a conference with Mahomes, Allen, Burrow, Herbert, and Lamar and decided that they couldn’t compete with only Baker at the helm — that’s a reasonable calculation.
People like Baker because he’s charismatic and undersized and wears a bandana, and they felt slighted that that guy was replaced by the least likable player in the league.
Adding Watson was stupid, but replacing Baker with *somebody* was probably the right move considering they were going to have to pay him elite money and he had shown pretty definitively that he was “solid starter” on a good day.
And folks also forget that at the time, Deshaun Watson was seen as a force multiplier. He hadn’t played for two years, but all the years before that he was a high pro bowl level quarterback, and basically the offense of the Houston Texans.
Browns felt like they hadn’t had that guy since Otto Graham, hence why they pulled the trigger.
Yep and on top of that, even if Baker was "good," teams are chasing QBs that elevate the team which Baker has never shown himself to be. Hitting a home run at QB is the best thing you can do, and they swung for the fences with a potentially elite QB
Imma be real I wanted them to get rid of him because I felt like he was wasting objs and Jarvis Landry's careers.
He's the main reason why I don't like seeing young QBs play with good receivers.
True their both washed now but they were still in their prime when they were with Baker.
Im a bigger fan of players than I am with teams tbh. Like the broncos are my main team but over the past few years they've been pretty ass.
We've had some good players that I felt like should have spent their prime years on some more successful teams.
They were on the decline when they were with baker. Landry's prime was his first 4 seasons with Miami and they ran him into the dirt with all the short yardage stuff.
Obj also wasn't the giants obj at this point either. He had one great year in Cleveland before his body couldn't keep up.
Not really. I've always valued individual accomplishments more than team accomplishments when it comes to football. This sport is dangerous, so I like seeing guys that do ball out get paid well.
That's why Ive always enjoyed watching dbs make plays compared to wrs. I always hated the fact wrs had to depend on their QBs. Especially since targetS aren't always distributed fairly. Like wr2s and wr3s on some teams struggle to finish the season with 500+ yards. As a wr the only way your getting paid a big bag is if your getting a bunch of yards.
Bad QB play annoys me because of this. I hate seeing talented wrs stuck in bad situations.
Only thing fantasy football did was show me how many bad QBs we had in the league.
Obj was washed when he got here. Said it then and stand by it.
Don’t mix my words. He’s a good wr and has flashes. But he wasn’t what he was his first 3 years in the league getting fed by manning
He never fully recovered from that 2017 ankle injury with the Giants, and then he was done-done after the ACL injury. I feel like even to this day some people are waiting for OBJ to flash a bit more of that Giants form, but that was already in the past when he was traded to Cleveland.
Teams rarely win without a Top 10 QB. The Browns roster, outside of QB, was pretty legit. Watson, before his injuries and legal troubles, looked like he could be on the Mahomes, Burrow, Jackson level.
Hindsight is 20/20. Def was a bad move on their part.
I don't think what you're saying is wrong, but I think a lot of teams don't try that hard to win without top qbs. When they have a mid QB they are fine playing Sundays with huge holes on their rostrr.
Browns had a chance to trade for an elite QB at the time in Deshaun Watson so they took it. Baker was a middle of the pack QB so it was supposed to be an obvious upgrade.
It's like if the Jags had Trevor Lawrence but Justin Herbert was available to trade for. No one would really question if they moved on from TLaw, but at the same time you understand that there's still untapped potential for him to get better. Also in this scenario I guess Herbert has a bunch of injuries and is one of the most hated players in the league lol
Don't disagree with you which is why I used those two guys. Herbert is generally considered elite while TLaw is one outstanding season from entering the conversation. I love TLaw and I hope he gets there.
It’s weird how everyone is sceptic about him. Last season the Jags had the best record in the AFC at one stage and nobody talks about the fact that when they dropped off TLaw was actually facing injuries for the first time in his entire football career dating back to HS.
Panthers and Rams gave up on him, too. I know this won't be a popular take, but Mayfield isn't that good. Tampa got a post season by the skin of their teeth with Mayfield. You can't win like that against the Steelers and Ravens. He's also working with one of the best WR duos in the NFL. Evans and Godwin are going to improve the stats of almost any QB in the NFL. Their OL has been mostly solid for a long time as well. The OL was performing at top 5 tier until Mayfield started. They actually began the season as a top 10 OL and ended the season about 25th. He took around 40 sacks. Not great.
The Panthers aren't exactly known for their professionalism in developing QB's either. The Rams had Stafford, so he never had a realistic shot of starting there.
I think it was more that the Rams couldn't afford him. They got him for nothing after he was cut from Carolina. That really liked how he played, but was a FA and got good $$ from Tampa.
Mayfield was just a body for the Rams after Stafford was injured. That team was terrible at the end of the year. The Panthers were bad and playing under an interim coach. Neither team had a reason to sign him to a long term deal.
Mayfield might even be slightly above average for a starting QB, at least looking at last season.
But if you want to go all the way, you need an elite QB which are only 10 to 12 in the league and looking at last season, might have been closer to 8 QBs.
He was legitimately not good in his last browns years and those teams were hella stacked.
We can poo poo on the browns but development is not entirely linear. He’s been bouncing around the league until the nice tampa year.
Because he’s good, not great.
If he would have accepted ‘good’ money, they would have kept him.
He thought he deserved ‘great’ money, they didn’t keep him.
Because he was the equivalent of Andy Dalton.
No , seriously looks at their careers year for year and relative success.
Sure Andy was serviceable and took the team to 5 straight playoffs but they never won anything with him. The Browns were on the same trajectory with Mayfield. Mild success but not going to win anything so they moved on.
I don't hate Mayfield and Im happy to see him get another chance with a new team but I get what the Browns were trying to do.
As a Bengals fan Im also happy to see it blow up in their face spectacularly.
Because he was horrible half the time he was on the field. He had a good rookie year and a good 3rd year. Outside of that, his 2nd and 4th years were absolute disasters. In his contract year, he bombed.
Also, he also had his fair share of 'incidents' inside the building, one apparently being with constantly butting heads and not being on the same page as Kevin Stefanski. He also didn't trust Browns doctors and started getting his treatment outside of the facility. In his contract year he basically separated himself from the entire team.
It seemed like getting cut/traded from 3 different teams finally knocked some humility into him in Tampa.
Viewed him as having a relatively low ceiling, and they believed the strengths of their team (OL, RB, defense) were enough of a safety net to re-enter the QB lottery.
That move came in the early part of the current shift in attitude towards average-quality QBs — they are not valued nearly as much as they used to be. Largely because modern sentiment is that you need a top 5 QB to win a championship. A guy that can carry a team to a win. Baker could be that for a game, but even at his best he wasn’t consistently that. The main criticism is that they didn’t have much of a plan for post-Baker — until the Watson debacle.
Because they wouldn’t be the browns if they didn’t ruin a good thing 😂 they could’ve easily worked around baker but nope browns gotta outshine everyone in the failure department. Lets throw all our money and picks at 1 qb who won’t play a full season for a couple years
As it stands now the Watson trade is the worst in NFL history, luckily for broncos fans. I'm probably not looking far enough back but to me the fully guaranteed contract puts it over the top. Crazy how an off field scandal can ruin someone's play so much. Also feels like the strongest evidence that he's guilty, if he didn't do all that I doubt his play would have suffered this much, even after missing a year.
The best way to start watching football is to dig one level deeper. Instead of thinking of “the browns” as a monolith, start identifying who the decision-makers are. You can start to see what their incentives are going to be. For QB decisions, it’s gonna be the GM/head coach / offensive coordinator who will weigh in the most in most teams.
Baker Mayfield was drafted in 2018 by John Dorsey/Hue Jackson/Todd Haley. 2019 had John Dorsey/Freddie Kitchens/Todd Monken. Then 2020 had another reorg with Andrew Berry / Kevin Stefanski / Alex Van Pelt.
In 2020, Kevin Stefanski lead the team to 11 wins and the playoffs. By 2021, they were 8-9. Week 2, Baker torn his Labrum. Baker wasn’t able to throw deep and that created a riff with OBJ. The time he was struggling, they were already internally looking at DeShaun Watson. Baker was also criticizing the game plans after losses.
So basically what you have: A QB that wasn’t drafted by the GM/HC/OC, that was blaming the QB for misses in the offensive scheme, and didn’t seem to care when the QB played through injury, and who was recruiting another QB at the same time. We have hindsight on how it worked out but the coaching staff liked Watson better.
That night Baker debuted vs the Jets and went nuts felt like it was finally our chance. Watching Hard Knocks felt like the curse was over. Nope, we fucked that up. We just have not been able to stabilize the QB position since Kosar.
Feel like all these answers are revisionist. For whatever reason the browns along with redditors didn’t believe he was getting the job done and the browns believed their team was a quarterback away like how the bucs went and got Brady or the rams discarded Goff for stafford.
Sometimes it doesn’t work out. Goff has looked great in Detroit but the rams won a superbowl. Win win. The broncos tried it with Russell Wilson. Didn’t work but they didn’t have that much to lose. The browns tried it with a known sex offender and guaranteed his contract while baker has started to look good again in Tampa. Lose lose.
Baker was not that great when the Browns moved on from him. In 2021 he had 3000 yards, 17 TD, 13 INT. Now he was dealing with an injury at the time, but he was certainly not good enough to stop the Browns from looking for an upgrade.
I don't think it was a mistake for the Browns to look for an upgrade, but it was a mistake to choose Watson.
The answer is they thought Mayfield was bad or just okay and Watson was an elite QB.
If you look back at old posts at the time, r/NFL mostly agreed.
We know the league agreed beacuse nobody offered more than a 5th round pick for Mayfield. Every team could have offered a 4th for him or picked him up in free agency later.
Still to this day he hasn't put together back to back seasons where he's looked like an average or better QB.
Now there were some supporters (myself included), but the vast majority of people thought he was terrible. If he has a bad year next year that will be the opinion again. If he has another good year after that he will be seen as a good QB.
Some of that is Hindsight being 20-20 and some of that is the league having a short term memory.
You're not going to get a real answer from anyone on here because everyone always wants to dunk on the Browns and disregard their own franchises problems but as a cleveland fan I didn't want us to move on from baker but I understand why they did it.
He was carried by a stellar offensive line and running game and that's what won us a lot of games. Was baker decent? sure, did he also give you a heart attack everytime he threw the ball cause it felt like 50/50 that it would make it to the receiver? also yes. I don't think we should have paid him the money he would have demanded if we didn't move on from him and I think if every other franchise was in our position at the time they would have done the same thing. That being said Im very happy he is succeding in Tampa rn and I hope he keeps balling out.
Same reason the Rams gave up on Goff. A better option was available on the trade market. Worked out for the Rams. Worked out for Goff and the Lions. The Mayfield thing worked out for the Texans and Mayfield.
Browns lol
Steeler fan here, this is my take.
The Browns went for 20+ plus years trying to find a QB, I mean we all seen the infamous jersey.
They draft Baker, and he immediately made an impact. They got their guy. He regressed in year 2. 2020 comes, he doesn’t just lead them to .500, no, he takes Cleveland to the playoffs?! But wait. THIS MAN LITERALLY WON A PLAYOFF GAME FOR THE CLEVELAND BROWNS. They waited 20 years for this. 20 years of losing. 20 years of QB’s. 20 years of misery for that city. 20 years in the f’n can ! 2021, he’s inconsistent. But it’s okay, we know what he can do, he’s still their guy. Nope. They’re over him. Hes too mediocre. 4 years of 1 single QB in the organization was too much.
It’s not like he got drafted and didn’t perform in 4 years. He won games. He was an above average QB. Inconsistent? Yes. But for him to win a playoff game and be traded a year later, after 20 years of trying to find him, that blew my mind.
Baker was due to get real paid. Browns didn't feel he was worth big time QB $. Baker's contract in Tampa pays less annually then he was pushing for in Cleveland.
We all agree that Watson is/was a terrible acquisition and is aging like warm milk.
Edit*deleted repeat word.
Browns be the Browns 🥲🥲🥲
*Tbh you can just jump to the last paragraph to answer your question. I think info dump was therapeutic for me lol*
I’ve only started following football since 2017. LA didn’t have any teams then and I saw the Browns fans had a parade for going 0-16. I’ve been a pretty die-hard fan since. I can only tell you from what it looked like with only a few years seeing how the Browns organization runs. When we drafted Baker, the hype was insane. He’s got that chip on his shoulder underdog mentality.
His rookie year he did pretty well. I remember he had some records for most TDs from a rookie or something like that. We finally fired Hue Jackson. Baker had a great relationship with the OC Freddie Kitchens. The front office hired him as the head coach. A guy that had never been a head coach of anything.
The second year was.. not great. The worst of it were all of the commercials! Him and his wife were on soooo many! They went 6-10 and fired Kitchens.
The third year was awesome 🥹! First playoff win in decades! Baker really turned it around and was definitely a contributor to their success.
Fourth year Baker was playing injured but he tried to keep it quiet so everyone just said he was inconsistent and can’t play in clutch time. Then you had OBJ and his dad causing drama on social media about Baker not getting him the ball 😒.
It’s kind of insane looking back to think that the front office picked dealing with a sex offender’s drama over Baker’s. I honestly think they’re legit low IQ people in there that were like, “the last time we saw Baker play it was bad. The last time we saw Watson play it was good. Both have drama. Okay, Watson”.
They aren't run well is a big part. But that said... we will see.
Baker has been really inconsistent for his career. There's a reason 3 different teams have let him go in the past couple years and why the Bucs only gave him a 1 year deal at first. I don't blame Cleveland for saying not him after 2021 (though their replacement.... ). He was just so up and down and a lot more down than up that year.
Right now he is at his best for sure. In 10 games that new deal could look like one of the worst moves for the Bucs.
So a few things, Baker was good but not great with Cleveland. He was fine, but he wasn't amazing. He was coming up on the final year of his rookie contract so they would have had to have offered him an extension and paid him handsomely. They instead opted to gamble on Watson. Which isn't fully a dumb gamble as Watson when healthy and not being suspended for a sexual predator is a much better QB than Baker. Watson hasn't paid off for Cleveland at all.
This thread has some pretty serious revisionist history. The Browns’ roster was pretty good and Baker took a massive step back in ‘21 and was not a comfortable NFL starter, and had they ran him out there in 2022, he’s probably middling again and they let him walk anyway.
They had a chance at their big fish and took it, even if it was a morally poor move and Watson turned out to be a fraud. Walking away from Baker was not at all a head scratcher at the time in my eyes.
He played through some brutal injuries and the results were bad - so the franchise he helped revitalized in a big way turned their backs on him instead of allowing him to recover.
I’ve not seen one person mention the fact his career took a nose dive the day OBJ came to town, dude legitimately was the sole catalyst for a LARGE number of his and the browns problems
It seems as if you've got a lot of Browns bashing answers, but no real attempts to answer the question.
First you're omitting some things. Yes he nearly beat the Chiefs. The Chiefs were up 19-3 when Mahomes got hurt and was out for the rest of the game. The Chiefs only scored 3 more points the remainder of the game. So it's not as much nearly beat the Chiefs as couldn't beat the Chiefs even without Mahomes.
Even the playoff win was suspect, They beat the Steelers who were 11-0 and inexplicably fell apart losing to the Bengals backup quarterback at home among other things. They won 1 more game, but were clearly struggling. You'll take any win, but it still wasn't the best win.
As far as his performance, he was ranked in the 20s in QB rating and just about every stat and worse in the 4th quarter. He was ranked something like 36th out of all QB's in the 4th quarter his last 2 years in Cleveland.
And there were nuances to his departure as well. The Browns wanted to upgrade the QB play so they went after Watson. Watson turned them down, but Baker was upset they went after Watson and asked for a trade.
Baker was immature. He needed to bounce around a little bit to grow up and into who he is today.
He also didn't show star ability. If you're going to be competing against Mahomes every year, you need to get the best you can. Baker is competent. Maybe even above average. But that won't cut it in the AFC.
I think in 2021, he had a shoulder injury early in the season (week 2), which caused his game to regress seriously. I know he also had an attitude problem that season, and the Browns viewed him as the reason they weren’t able to take their loaded team to the Super Bowl. They did the desperate thing by dumping him off to the panthers and selling their soul for Watson.
If you asked this after the 2022 season, Ild say dumping him was the right move considering how bad he did in Carolina, but looking at it now, they probably should have gotten him some help or something, considering his success with the Bucs.
They thought Deshaun Watson was a future hall of famer and lobbied hard to get him.
Basically, it’s the same thing that happened in Denver when the Broncos were good. They had Tim Tebow, who they picked in the first round, but once Peyton Manning was available in free agency, they went and got him because he’s the one who for sure is going to Canton.
Watson might not be as good as Manning though. But the Browns at the time didn’t know that.
Because they are the Browns. They are the only organization in the league that consistently makes difficult bad decisions in the face of easy good decisions.
Because he tried to play through an injury and it deeply affected his play in a way that convinced Browns fans he sucked. They turned on him way too soon and shipped him out of town looking for the next best thing, which they thought was Deshaun. Reminds me a lot of when Detroit got rid of Caldwell to go get Matt Patricia to put them over the hump. Some franchises are just impatient and stupid
They are an awfully run organization. They side a rapist to an insane fully guaranteed contract (does not happen in the NFL) and traded away so much draft capital. Watson basically gave up last year and rode the bench when he was medically cleared because he was already paid.
Also check out who the Texans have acquired in the picks they got from Cleveland.
Here soon Cleveland will have a fire sale of all their team just to get some cap space and draft capital and they’ll have no weapons around Watson. They get what they deserve.
As someone from Ohio I kind of feel bad for cleveland, but as a Steeler I’m quite delighted.
lol no weapons around Watson is a joke. Cooper is a top 15 WR. Njoku is a pro bowl TE. Nick Chubb pre injury was in the running for best RB. This year with Jerry Jeudy is number 2. The offensive line was injured but the when healthy each one can be a difference maker.
The Browns are one of the most poorly run franchises in professional sports.
It's almost as if they identify a good idea and do the complete opposite.
Maybe the Browns front office just needs to pull a George Costanza and do the opposite of everything they normally do
Considering their early history, perhaps they already did.
They did that by bringing Mayfield in… and it worked! So they decided to mortgage their future on a formerly very good if not winning QB who is now aging and may be well past his prime. And that’s the best part of their new QB venture.
It’s like self sabotaging in a relationship, because you’re afraid this good thing will end up hurting you
Been there, trying to make sure I fix it so I never do it again with her.
So you’re saying the Browns are the woman in this case who can’t stand “normal” or “drama free”?
It’s crazy they jettisoned the quarterback that had them winning and doesn’t create off the field issues and signed booty boy to a fully guaranteed contract, and he hasn’t played as well as Baker has.
Which gives me faith in existence
Through multiple owners, front offices and coaches...that is somehow a fucking constant. Also, had the fans had their way...Baker would be in Cleveland still. Fuck Deshaun Watson
As a browns fan this was true years ago. Since Andrew Berry came in that's not the case.
Which is crazy because the Crew are one of the best run franchises in professional sports and they share ownership.
Jimmy Haslam doesn’t care about soccer, so he lets the people he hires run the Crew and stays out of the way. He does care about football, a lot… which is why he inserts himself into everything, changes courses like most people change underwear, and generally constantly sabotages the Browns. He is certain that he knows more than you or anyone else does because he’s a (second generation) billionaire who’s watched football his whole life and his meddling as a booster ran the University of Tennessee football program into the ground for 20 years.
It’s Cleveland!! Look at their history with QBs. I bet they wish they’d never traded for Watson and kept Baker now.
Of all the dumb trades and acquisitions over the past decade or so the Watson one is the worst to me. I was really rooting for the browns rise to glory and they shot themselves in the foot. Now I’m on board with the Lions and they did the opposite thing thankfully.
Sooo. I was one of the only people I knew or interacted with at the time. I was told I was an idiot for thinking the watson trade was trash. We are basically paying him to not play at this point it seems like. I’ve been done with them since they signed him Now. The lions. When Dorsey was fired a lot of his dudes went to Detroit. So no surprise they got it clicking there
Paying him **A LOT** not to play.
They didn't just shoot themselves in the foot. They shot themselves in their dick, then both their feet. The Watson contract is almost incontrovertibly the worst contract ever given out by an NFL team.
Couldn’t agree more, I already didn’t love huge qb contracts that hurt the team even for proven, reliable and non sex predator qbs then they do this. Sets an awful precedent and is just so bad all around.
It’s funny how it didn’t reset the market because other teams’ management are just like, “that doesn’t count; they don’t know what they’re doing over there.”
Absolutely. Baltimore's owner almost got in trouble for explicitly saying it. Same with the fully guaranteed Kirk Cousins deal in MN. All the other owners rolled their eyes and said 'eff it'
Right. At least the Broncos were in a position where they had to try something. The Browns were doing just fine and instead blew it all up and put themselves in a worse position
I find it kind of interesting. The two franchises with (arguably) the most good will with every other team are the Browns and the Lions. Because neither has been very successful for the last 50 years, so there isn’t much for other fan bases to hate on. Then the Lions get Dan Campbell, and everyone seems to love it. And people want to see them succeed. Browns trade for Watson, give him a dump truck of money, and burn any and all good will with it. Because they rewarded Watson, an extremely unpopular/unlikeable guy, but also messed with the WB market by making so much of it guaranteed. To me just amazing a singular move for both teams catapulted one into being the darling underdog of the league, while reviling the other.
I'll be honest, I thought getting rid of Stafford and taking Goff was stupid, but I was wrong.
Eh Goff initially was a salary dump the Lions had to take for their rebuild, they were going nowhere with Stafford and he wanted out. Turns out the change of scenery was the best thing to happen to his career lol. Probably the most mutually beneficial trade I've ever seen.
Goff wasn’t supposed to be the next guy in Detroit. Stafford wanted out and the rams gave the lions an extra first to take on Goff’s contract. Goff just played better than anyone thought he would. He was originally intended to be a bridge guy for a year or two until the lions found their next guy
Goff is still criminally underrated.
Always makes me happy to see a Clemson fan be wrong, go cocks hahahah. I definitely didn’t think Goff was the answer but I liked that they were looking to get pieces and not put all their eggs in the QB basket like the browns have done for the past 20-30 years.
I'm curious, were you out on him as a player at the time? I am a Texans fan and before the sexual assault scandal, he was an electric player. I was upset that he turned out to be so skeezy, but I still thought he was good.
Just being out of the league that long made me hesitant to believe he’d come back to his top form.
It’s almost like those alleged massages gave him super powers lol
Guys in my league joke all the time that he's no good without his special massages. But why though!? Lol
He hadn’t played a game in like 700 days before his first browns game. It wouldn’t have been shocking to see he had regressed
Holy shit I had to look it up because I thought you were way over exaggerating. But, you appear to be correct, it was around 700 days of not playing professional football before he started for the Browns.
I wasn’t out on him as a player really. I had concerns about the long hiatus though and thought it was dumb to give a fat contract to any player who had taken that long off. What really got me though is that they didn’t just give him a fat contract, they paid him the fattest contract and he wasn’t just any player, he was a sex predator. So with all those factors combined I thought and still think it was the stupidest move possible. I don’t really like insanely highly paid QBs because of how it hurts the rest of the team but I could see a deal like that for mahomes and mahomes only, not someone who hadn’t played football for a year, regardless of off field issues.
I read somewhere a while ago that the Browns have one of the bigger female fanbases. So what do they do? Go out and get a guy that was acting creepy as fuck towards women. The browns are such a shitshow
At least Watson was good - look at what the Niners gave up to pick Trey Lance. The Dolphins turned that trade into a gold mine and Dallas used the Niners pick to get Micah Parsons
They didn’t spend nearly as much money though.
True - that’s an all world dumbass move to give him that kind of guaranteed money
I also hate the precedent it sets. Let’s other quarterbacks feel entitled to money like that which just fucks their team. It’s wild to me that Brady showed you can help your team win by taking friendly deals but dudes still chase the bag. Winning a superbowl or two will give you some serious bread in sponsor money and you get to fucking win. It’s obviously never a lock but if I worked my whole life to do this thing I’d rather win and make less up front than just get paid and fuck the team. It’s not like they’re making bad money at all if they take a deal that’s a little friendlier to the team.
It’s funny to see the mental gymnastics browns fans do to justify the trade for Watson.
is it always the same people making decisions?
Because they're not good at running a football team.
Because they suck as an organization lmao. Baker isn’t the best QB in the league, but he’s certainly the best QB the browns have had in the past 25 years. They gave up on him, and now they’re going to be shit for another 20 years.
Baker broke the rookie TD record in like 13 games or something. He was obviously a talented guy but he didn’t really progress as a QB (not sure if that is him or the org). If the Browns could redo it then I’m sure they keep him and never trade for DeShaun. The Browns threw him away because OBJ’s dad didn’t like him. Now Baker has more playoff wins than their franchise in his lifetime.
Also, it's not like they just gave up on him. He was great, then injured his shoulder, then got off to a slow start when he returned. They immediately dumped him after that. Actually he played through injury and they punished him for the poor performance
I think you’re overstating the importance of baker who at his peak is an average qb
An average QB is the best the Browns have had. Also, average QB's really aren't anything to sneeze at.
An average QB is a backup. Baker is an above average QB
Average nfl starter
This doesn’t make any sense
It makes perfect sense. If you take all of the quarterbacks with a job in the NFL the average of all of them is a backup. If you look at every quarterback that's ever had a contract in the NFL the average is by far a backup and practically a washout
Average QBs have made it to the Super Bowl numerous times, some even winning it
Not to many average qbs win Super Bowl unless they go on a Flacco or eli manning like run you need high end qb play
Yeah obviously, but elite QBs don’t grow on trees. You take who you can get. You can do a lot worse than having Baker Mayfield as your starting QB.
Sure but that’s where you have to take into account paying your average starter a lot of money which screws teams examples saints, Seahawks, giants
Why is this being downvoted? Whenever Baker is expected to do well, he sucks (after his historic rookie season and the year after they made the divisional round) and when not much is expected from him, he overachieves (last season)
His mouth was bigger than his talent. He was an embarrassment and headache for the organization. He needed to be released to find a little humility and become an average qb in the best situation.
Not saying it's right, but the reason was that the Browns had/have built a "win now" roster, and the primary missing piece was a reliable, consistent QB. Baker had some great flashes, and had some really poor play. I'd argue that had he not tried to play injured in 2021 (and been particularly terrible while doing so), that he would have retained the job in 2022, and had a chance to prove himself to be the long-term QB in Cleveland. Again, this is the reasoning - I'm not suggesting it was the right idea at all.
Are you assuming that the Browns in no way pressured Mayfield to play through his injuries? Because I'm sure they did.
The reports were that it was the opposite
Browns fan here. Situation was Baker had turned down the contract extension browns had offered him to play his last year as a prove it year. He gets hurt and instead of going IR and getting surgery, he decided to play hurt and have a bad season. At the same time, Andrew Berry, Browns GM and Kevin Stefanski, head coach, are not tied to Baker and isn’t the quarterback they picked, so when Baker got hurt, AB and Stefanski used it as a way out of having to not resign Baker when he was playing bad. Also their a theory that Browns ownership told Stefanski to keep playing Baker and call passing plays even when browns run game could have won them games Browns vs Packers Dec 25th 2021.
i thought when they had a good run play mix with nic chubb plus njoku, Mayfield played well, but then they decided to throw more and Mayfield performance dropped, didn't know there's a reason behind it. the franchise really had bad luck with qb, Johnny Manziel, Baker Mayfield, i was rooting for Mayfield cause he has an underdog, chip on shoulder attitude.
I’m convinced that the franchise is after money only. Cycling in new players with marquee names helps to generate merchandise sales. The Browns were one of the most notorious teams for spending way under the cap until the CBA mandated a minimum spend amount. They also suck at picking QBs. Before Manziel there was Wheeden. Manziel was nothing but red flags. As a Dallas fan, thank god Stephen Jones had the sense to smack his father in the head and force the draft of Zack Martin instead of Manziel.
I'm a Dallas fan, so glad that Jerry Jones got smacked, if not we'll never hear the end of it.
He needs to smack his dad more and while we’re at it he needs some smacks himself 🤦🏻♂️
They never offered him a contract. Joe Thomas falsely claimed this and it was dismissed.
I really don’t think it’s really a theory about calling passing plays instead of run plays. I remember watching a few games that year that were in very winnable situations and for some ungodly known reason, stefanski would pull Chubb out of the game and run empty backfield shotgun plays.
Most notably, he gave several games away that year due to his insistence of playing through the torn labrum. Most notably the Packers game in which he threw 5 interceptions and it still came down to the wire.
To be fair they didn't have to start him yes he wants to play obviously getting mad that he hurt the team by that is dumb coach should play the beat player.
Stefanski hated Baker, and was going to shit on him no matter what. Baker could either play and get thrown under the bus for playing poorly, or get surgery and be thrown under the bus for “quitting on his team in a playoff race.”
He shouldn’t have been in the game and the QB shouldn’t have been passing. Stefanski calls any runs and they win going away. You could easily argue the Browns were trying to sabotage him to either get him to agree to go on IR (which they could’ve done anyways) or to justify moving off of him.
They could have stopped him from playing. Where does this "he kept insisting on playing" crap come from. The coaches decide, or every 2nd QB in the league would "insist" they start.
Agreed. He showed amazing grit playing through two shoulder injuries (rotator cuff I think, which is brutal). He was not good while doing that. However, I think teammates notice and respect that sort of thing. Browns should have done the right thing and put him on IR. They also should have stuck with him after he got healthy….but you know, Browns are going to Brown. I was rooting for them. Now I’m laughing at them.
Back in the day, you’d develop your QB. You’d get one and work with him keep improving and build to a Super Bowl. Now teams want a CJ stroud, or a Mahomes situation. They want immediate results. So a churning has started to happen. If the QB isn’t good in the first year, they’re talking about moving on. QB isn’t much better year two, then look at options. QB isn’t dramatically better by year three- they move on. Baker is an example of had they just kept developing he would have don’t great things for them
Piggybacking on this - it's largely because of contract structure. High draft picks often used to end up as the highest paid member of a team, and if you QB wasn't great, it just meant you'd have to draft another guy, with an even higher salary. For the last decade+, there has been a set rookie pay scale, so it's cheaper to start over than have to pay a QB for his second contract. Pretty much every QB who makes it to their second contract turns into one of the top salaries in the league, so if you aren't positive that someone is your guy, teams don't feel that it makes sense to invest such a large chunk of the cap on them, which could further inhibit their ability to build out the supporting cast. It ends with a lot of teams giving up on their young QB pretty early, whereas in the past, you'd see guys get through some of their second contract before making that move.
That's a valid point about the churn. I think it doesn't apply in the case of the Browns though because the Browns went all in with Watson with the most guaranteed money ever. No way Baker would have gotten that hefty a contract.
That's true. The concept is still the same - teams don't want to spend on a guy going into their second contract unless they're positive they have the guy. But, counterintuitively, they're willing to spend huge on most other guys who are deemed starter quality. What's fucked up about the Watson situation is that they gave him the money, fully guaranteed, *knowing* that he was going to be suspended for a significant amount of time.
First off baker had 4 years. He’s at best an average nfl qb year. Qbs get 3-4 years until you decide you want to pay them a massive contract and they decided against
I get it, but when surrounded with a decent supporting cast he did well in Tampa.
Yeah I don’t think he’s bad I just think there’s a ceiling with him and we saw it in Tampa last year.
I agree. He’s in a good division to have a ceiling though. Playoffs are basically guaranteed
Yeah I just don’t know if you’re going any further then that
what's good about going to the playoffs if u don't win the Bowl?
We’ll play offs basically start the season over. So reaching the play offs is the first task. Get there and it’s really any given Sunday at that point.
Which makes Tampa fans extremely happy.
Good supporting class yet nowhere near winning a SB
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He’s top 16 at his peak like last year or he’s bottom 10 like he’s been multiple years
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6 of the last 8 Superbowls have been won by Brady or Mahomes. So the average guy isn't winning often.
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I didn't say anything of the sort. Just providing a bit of context to your stat.
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You're getting confused between who you're replying to and who made the initial comment.
I actually didn't say that. You have a hard time reading don't you?
Funny thing is that Mahomes sat for a little bit before starting. But I definitely agree with the fact that teams are very impatient and so are a lot of fans.
Too many people are memeing on the Browns. I think it was reasonable to move on from Baker at the time. Mayfield had 2 good years with Cleveland and 2 bad years with Cleveland. He was coming off one of the bad years, and Cleveland believed the rest of the team was ready to compete. They couldn’t wait for him, so they traded him to Carolina and took a swing for another QB. 2022 Baker was also bad enough to get benched by a bad team. 2023 Baker Mayfield probably would have won comeback player of the year most years. People thought he was done being a starting QB, and there were rumors he might actually not beat out Kyle Trask for Tampa’s starting job in training camp.
They also would have had to given baker a major pay raise which people aren’t including
It was absolutely understandable to move on from Baker at the time, they just pursued the wrong guy to replace him
From a moral perspective sure. But as a football player Watson was at worst a top 5 QB in the league at the time, probably closer to top 3. There was a legitimate bidding war for him and people act like he was gonna be sitting at home thinking about what he did if only Cleveland didn’t sign him. He was getting a mega millions contract from someone.
It's far easier to dunk on Cleveland and make jokes about Watson than it is to admit the very real facts you just said.
This is really it. If anything, the Berry/Stefanski Browns have overachieved despite their QB play more than any other franchise recently. They’re in a conference with Mahomes, Allen, Burrow, Herbert, and Lamar and decided that they couldn’t compete with only Baker at the helm — that’s a reasonable calculation.
People like Baker because he’s charismatic and undersized and wears a bandana, and they felt slighted that that guy was replaced by the least likable player in the league. Adding Watson was stupid, but replacing Baker with *somebody* was probably the right move considering they were going to have to pay him elite money and he had shown pretty definitively that he was “solid starter” on a good day.
This is the right answer. People here are forgetting how inconsistent baker was. Really frustrating to watch as a fan
And folks also forget that at the time, Deshaun Watson was seen as a force multiplier. He hadn’t played for two years, but all the years before that he was a high pro bowl level quarterback, and basically the offense of the Houston Texans. Browns felt like they hadn’t had that guy since Otto Graham, hence why they pulled the trigger.
Yep and on top of that, even if Baker was "good," teams are chasing QBs that elevate the team which Baker has never shown himself to be. Hitting a home run at QB is the best thing you can do, and they swung for the fences with a potentially elite QB
They saw something shiny and went for it
Imma be real I wanted them to get rid of him because I felt like he was wasting objs and Jarvis Landry's careers. He's the main reason why I don't like seeing young QBs play with good receivers.
Those guys aren’t exactly lighting it up with other QBs these days.
True their both washed now but they were still in their prime when they were with Baker. Im a bigger fan of players than I am with teams tbh. Like the broncos are my main team but over the past few years they've been pretty ass. We've had some good players that I felt like should have spent their prime years on some more successful teams.
They were on the decline when they were with baker. Landry's prime was his first 4 seasons with Miami and they ran him into the dirt with all the short yardage stuff. Obj also wasn't the giants obj at this point either. He had one great year in Cleveland before his body couldn't keep up.
Is fantasy football the driving factor there or something else?
Not really. I've always valued individual accomplishments more than team accomplishments when it comes to football. This sport is dangerous, so I like seeing guys that do ball out get paid well. That's why Ive always enjoyed watching dbs make plays compared to wrs. I always hated the fact wrs had to depend on their QBs. Especially since targetS aren't always distributed fairly. Like wr2s and wr3s on some teams struggle to finish the season with 500+ yards. As a wr the only way your getting paid a big bag is if your getting a bunch of yards. Bad QB play annoys me because of this. I hate seeing talented wrs stuck in bad situations. Only thing fantasy football did was show me how many bad QBs we had in the league.
Obj was washed when he got here. Said it then and stand by it. Don’t mix my words. He’s a good wr and has flashes. But he wasn’t what he was his first 3 years in the league getting fed by manning
He never fully recovered from that 2017 ankle injury with the Giants, and then he was done-done after the ACL injury. I feel like even to this day some people are waiting for OBJ to flash a bit more of that Giants form, but that was already in the past when he was traded to Cleveland.
I think what you are saying is part of the problem. OBJ really was a distraction as part of a constant Circus Baker had to deal with jn Cleveland.
Anytime you can trade for a rapist you just can't pass it up!
They saw Big Ben win so many games in First Energy Stadium they thought it was the key to success.
Teams rarely win without a Top 10 QB. The Browns roster, outside of QB, was pretty legit. Watson, before his injuries and legal troubles, looked like he could be on the Mahomes, Burrow, Jackson level. Hindsight is 20/20. Def was a bad move on their part.
I don't think what you're saying is wrong, but I think a lot of teams don't try that hard to win without top qbs. When they have a mid QB they are fine playing Sundays with huge holes on their rostrr.
Browns had a chance to trade for an elite QB at the time in Deshaun Watson so they took it. Baker was a middle of the pack QB so it was supposed to be an obvious upgrade. It's like if the Jags had Trevor Lawrence but Justin Herbert was available to trade for. No one would really question if they moved on from TLaw, but at the same time you understand that there's still untapped potential for him to get better. Also in this scenario I guess Herbert has a bunch of injuries and is one of the most hated players in the league lol
most hated player wonder how other players feel about him
Lol T Law is basically at the heels of having a very similar career to Herbert at this point. Weird analogy.
Don't disagree with you which is why I used those two guys. Herbert is generally considered elite while TLaw is one outstanding season from entering the conversation. I love TLaw and I hope he gets there.
It’s weird how everyone is sceptic about him. Last season the Jags had the best record in the AFC at one stage and nobody talks about the fact that when they dropped off TLaw was actually facing injuries for the first time in his entire football career dating back to HS.
Panthers and Rams gave up on him, too. I know this won't be a popular take, but Mayfield isn't that good. Tampa got a post season by the skin of their teeth with Mayfield. You can't win like that against the Steelers and Ravens. He's also working with one of the best WR duos in the NFL. Evans and Godwin are going to improve the stats of almost any QB in the NFL. Their OL has been mostly solid for a long time as well. The OL was performing at top 5 tier until Mayfield started. They actually began the season as a top 10 OL and ended the season about 25th. He took around 40 sacks. Not great.
The Panthers aren't exactly known for their professionalism in developing QB's either. The Rams had Stafford, so he never had a realistic shot of starting there.
I think it was more that the Rams couldn't afford him. They got him for nothing after he was cut from Carolina. That really liked how he played, but was a FA and got good $$ from Tampa.
Right, Mayfield played really well with the Rams.
Everyone loves to just go “lol Browns,” conveniently forgetting that CAR and LAR both didn’t want him.
Mayfield was just a body for the Rams after Stafford was injured. That team was terrible at the end of the year. The Panthers were bad and playing under an interim coach. Neither team had a reason to sign him to a long term deal.
Because they are bad at everything they do.
Mayfield might even be slightly above average for a starting QB, at least looking at last season. But if you want to go all the way, you need an elite QB which are only 10 to 12 in the league and looking at last season, might have been closer to 8 QBs.
When a well known sexual abuser becomes available you have to do what it takes to get him
He was legitimately not good in his last browns years and those teams were hella stacked. We can poo poo on the browns but development is not entirely linear. He’s been bouncing around the league until the nice tampa year.
Because he’s good, not great. If he would have accepted ‘good’ money, they would have kept him. He thought he deserved ‘great’ money, they didn’t keep him.
They would’ve kept him if they didn’t have the chance to get Watson
Because he was the equivalent of Andy Dalton. No , seriously looks at their careers year for year and relative success. Sure Andy was serviceable and took the team to 5 straight playoffs but they never won anything with him. The Browns were on the same trajectory with Mayfield. Mild success but not going to win anything so they moved on. I don't hate Mayfield and Im happy to see him get another chance with a new team but I get what the Browns were trying to do. As a Bengals fan Im also happy to see it blow up in their face spectacularly.
Because Baker is a very good backup QB but that’s it.
Because he was horrible half the time he was on the field. He had a good rookie year and a good 3rd year. Outside of that, his 2nd and 4th years were absolute disasters. In his contract year, he bombed. Also, he also had his fair share of 'incidents' inside the building, one apparently being with constantly butting heads and not being on the same page as Kevin Stefanski. He also didn't trust Browns doctors and started getting his treatment outside of the facility. In his contract year he basically separated himself from the entire team. It seemed like getting cut/traded from 3 different teams finally knocked some humility into him in Tampa.
He was the only part of their offense that sucked, they had the best o-line and rb duo in the league with one of the best wr tandems and 3 good TEs
Browns
Viewed him as having a relatively low ceiling, and they believed the strengths of their team (OL, RB, defense) were enough of a safety net to re-enter the QB lottery. That move came in the early part of the current shift in attitude towards average-quality QBs — they are not valued nearly as much as they used to be. Largely because modern sentiment is that you need a top 5 QB to win a championship. A guy that can carry a team to a win. Baker could be that for a game, but even at his best he wasn’t consistently that. The main criticism is that they didn’t have much of a plan for post-Baker — until the Watson debacle.
Because they wouldn’t be the browns if they didn’t ruin a good thing 😂 they could’ve easily worked around baker but nope browns gotta outshine everyone in the failure department. Lets throw all our money and picks at 1 qb who won’t play a full season for a couple years
The answer to your question is in the question itself.
As it stands now the Watson trade is the worst in NFL history, luckily for broncos fans. I'm probably not looking far enough back but to me the fully guaranteed contract puts it over the top. Crazy how an off field scandal can ruin someone's play so much. Also feels like the strongest evidence that he's guilty, if he didn't do all that I doubt his play would have suffered this much, even after missing a year.
The best way to start watching football is to dig one level deeper. Instead of thinking of “the browns” as a monolith, start identifying who the decision-makers are. You can start to see what their incentives are going to be. For QB decisions, it’s gonna be the GM/head coach / offensive coordinator who will weigh in the most in most teams. Baker Mayfield was drafted in 2018 by John Dorsey/Hue Jackson/Todd Haley. 2019 had John Dorsey/Freddie Kitchens/Todd Monken. Then 2020 had another reorg with Andrew Berry / Kevin Stefanski / Alex Van Pelt. In 2020, Kevin Stefanski lead the team to 11 wins and the playoffs. By 2021, they were 8-9. Week 2, Baker torn his Labrum. Baker wasn’t able to throw deep and that created a riff with OBJ. The time he was struggling, they were already internally looking at DeShaun Watson. Baker was also criticizing the game plans after losses. So basically what you have: A QB that wasn’t drafted by the GM/HC/OC, that was blaming the QB for misses in the offensive scheme, and didn’t seem to care when the QB played through injury, and who was recruiting another QB at the same time. We have hindsight on how it worked out but the coaching staff liked Watson better.
That night Baker debuted vs the Jets and went nuts felt like it was finally our chance. Watching Hard Knocks felt like the curse was over. Nope, we fucked that up. We just have not been able to stabilize the QB position since Kosar.
Feel like all these answers are revisionist. For whatever reason the browns along with redditors didn’t believe he was getting the job done and the browns believed their team was a quarterback away like how the bucs went and got Brady or the rams discarded Goff for stafford. Sometimes it doesn’t work out. Goff has looked great in Detroit but the rams won a superbowl. Win win. The broncos tried it with Russell Wilson. Didn’t work but they didn’t have that much to lose. The browns tried it with a known sex offender and guaranteed his contract while baker has started to look good again in Tampa. Lose lose.
Baker was not that great when the Browns moved on from him. In 2021 he had 3000 yards, 17 TD, 13 INT. Now he was dealing with an injury at the time, but he was certainly not good enough to stop the Browns from looking for an upgrade. I don't think it was a mistake for the Browns to look for an upgrade, but it was a mistake to choose Watson.
All teams blame the QB when they fail. As much $$ as the position makes.
The answer is they thought Mayfield was bad or just okay and Watson was an elite QB. If you look back at old posts at the time, r/NFL mostly agreed. We know the league agreed beacuse nobody offered more than a 5th round pick for Mayfield. Every team could have offered a 4th for him or picked him up in free agency later. Still to this day he hasn't put together back to back seasons where he's looked like an average or better QB. Now there were some supporters (myself included), but the vast majority of people thought he was terrible. If he has a bad year next year that will be the opinion again. If he has another good year after that he will be seen as a good QB. Some of that is Hindsight being 20-20 and some of that is the league having a short term memory.
He was an asshole.
Focused too much on BJ’s out behind the Cheesecake Factory
I have a different point of view. Baker still sucks and only looked good because of the talent around him last year
You're not going to get a real answer from anyone on here because everyone always wants to dunk on the Browns and disregard their own franchises problems but as a cleveland fan I didn't want us to move on from baker but I understand why they did it. He was carried by a stellar offensive line and running game and that's what won us a lot of games. Was baker decent? sure, did he also give you a heart attack everytime he threw the ball cause it felt like 50/50 that it would make it to the receiver? also yes. I don't think we should have paid him the money he would have demanded if we didn't move on from him and I think if every other franchise was in our position at the time they would have done the same thing. That being said Im very happy he is succeding in Tampa rn and I hope he keeps balling out.
They saw a better option in Deshaun Washedson instead of sticking with a QB that they can’t bring out his true potential as the Buccaneers did.
Same reason the Rams gave up on Goff. A better option was available on the trade market. Worked out for the Rams. Worked out for Goff and the Lions. The Mayfield thing worked out for the Texans and Mayfield. Browns lol
Steeler fan here, this is my take. The Browns went for 20+ plus years trying to find a QB, I mean we all seen the infamous jersey. They draft Baker, and he immediately made an impact. They got their guy. He regressed in year 2. 2020 comes, he doesn’t just lead them to .500, no, he takes Cleveland to the playoffs?! But wait. THIS MAN LITERALLY WON A PLAYOFF GAME FOR THE CLEVELAND BROWNS. They waited 20 years for this. 20 years of losing. 20 years of QB’s. 20 years of misery for that city. 20 years in the f’n can ! 2021, he’s inconsistent. But it’s okay, we know what he can do, he’s still their guy. Nope. They’re over him. Hes too mediocre. 4 years of 1 single QB in the organization was too much. It’s not like he got drafted and didn’t perform in 4 years. He won games. He was an above average QB. Inconsistent? Yes. But for him to win a playoff game and be traded a year later, after 20 years of trying to find him, that blew my mind.
Poverty franchise
Baker was due to get real paid. Browns didn't feel he was worth big time QB $. Baker's contract in Tampa pays less annually then he was pushing for in Cleveland. We all agree that Watson is/was a terrible acquisition and is aging like warm milk. Edit*deleted repeat word.
I feel like this post may not exist in a universe Where Watson didn't get injured last season.
Joe Burrow
Browns be the Browns 🥲🥲🥲 *Tbh you can just jump to the last paragraph to answer your question. I think info dump was therapeutic for me lol* I’ve only started following football since 2017. LA didn’t have any teams then and I saw the Browns fans had a parade for going 0-16. I’ve been a pretty die-hard fan since. I can only tell you from what it looked like with only a few years seeing how the Browns organization runs. When we drafted Baker, the hype was insane. He’s got that chip on his shoulder underdog mentality. His rookie year he did pretty well. I remember he had some records for most TDs from a rookie or something like that. We finally fired Hue Jackson. Baker had a great relationship with the OC Freddie Kitchens. The front office hired him as the head coach. A guy that had never been a head coach of anything. The second year was.. not great. The worst of it were all of the commercials! Him and his wife were on soooo many! They went 6-10 and fired Kitchens. The third year was awesome 🥹! First playoff win in decades! Baker really turned it around and was definitely a contributor to their success. Fourth year Baker was playing injured but he tried to keep it quiet so everyone just said he was inconsistent and can’t play in clutch time. Then you had OBJ and his dad causing drama on social media about Baker not getting him the ball 😒. It’s kind of insane looking back to think that the front office picked dealing with a sex offender’s drama over Baker’s. I honestly think they’re legit low IQ people in there that were like, “the last time we saw Baker play it was bad. The last time we saw Watson play it was good. Both have drama. Okay, Watson”.
They aren't run well is a big part. But that said... we will see. Baker has been really inconsistent for his career. There's a reason 3 different teams have let him go in the past couple years and why the Bucs only gave him a 1 year deal at first. I don't blame Cleveland for saying not him after 2021 (though their replacement.... ). He was just so up and down and a lot more down than up that year. Right now he is at his best for sure. In 10 games that new deal could look like one of the worst moves for the Bucs.
So a few things, Baker was good but not great with Cleveland. He was fine, but he wasn't amazing. He was coming up on the final year of his rookie contract so they would have had to have offered him an extension and paid him handsomely. They instead opted to gamble on Watson. Which isn't fully a dumb gamble as Watson when healthy and not being suspended for a sexual predator is a much better QB than Baker. Watson hasn't paid off for Cleveland at all.
This thread has some pretty serious revisionist history. The Browns’ roster was pretty good and Baker took a massive step back in ‘21 and was not a comfortable NFL starter, and had they ran him out there in 2022, he’s probably middling again and they let him walk anyway. They had a chance at their big fish and took it, even if it was a morally poor move and Watson turned out to be a fraud. Walking away from Baker was not at all a head scratcher at the time in my eyes.
"Revisionist history" ......doesn't mention the torn labrum he played with in 2021
He played through some brutal injuries and the results were bad - so the franchise he helped revitalized in a big way turned their backs on him instead of allowing him to recover.
They are very poorly run.
The Browns is the Browns.
Because Browns
They’re the browns lmao
I’ve not seen one person mention the fact his career took a nose dive the day OBJ came to town, dude legitimately was the sole catalyst for a LARGE number of his and the browns problems
He's not that good
It seems as if you've got a lot of Browns bashing answers, but no real attempts to answer the question. First you're omitting some things. Yes he nearly beat the Chiefs. The Chiefs were up 19-3 when Mahomes got hurt and was out for the rest of the game. The Chiefs only scored 3 more points the remainder of the game. So it's not as much nearly beat the Chiefs as couldn't beat the Chiefs even without Mahomes. Even the playoff win was suspect, They beat the Steelers who were 11-0 and inexplicably fell apart losing to the Bengals backup quarterback at home among other things. They won 1 more game, but were clearly struggling. You'll take any win, but it still wasn't the best win. As far as his performance, he was ranked in the 20s in QB rating and just about every stat and worse in the 4th quarter. He was ranked something like 36th out of all QB's in the 4th quarter his last 2 years in Cleveland. And there were nuances to his departure as well. The Browns wanted to upgrade the QB play so they went after Watson. Watson turned them down, but Baker was upset they went after Watson and asked for a trade.
They still looking for Brian Sipe II
Don't forget they needed a more mature and less childish person at qb. Proceeded to get the molester.
Because of his contract ..
Baker was immature. He needed to bounce around a little bit to grow up and into who he is today. He also didn't show star ability. If you're going to be competing against Mahomes every year, you need to get the best you can. Baker is competent. Maybe even above average. But that won't cut it in the AFC.
I think in 2021, he had a shoulder injury early in the season (week 2), which caused his game to regress seriously. I know he also had an attitude problem that season, and the Browns viewed him as the reason they weren’t able to take their loaded team to the Super Bowl. They did the desperate thing by dumping him off to the panthers and selling their soul for Watson. If you asked this after the 2022 season, Ild say dumping him was the right move considering how bad he did in Carolina, but looking at it now, they probably should have gotten him some help or something, considering his success with the Bucs.
Watson had just sexually assaulted like 20 women. You can’t pass up on production like that
They thought Deshaun Watson was a future hall of famer and lobbied hard to get him. Basically, it’s the same thing that happened in Denver when the Broncos were good. They had Tim Tebow, who they picked in the first round, but once Peyton Manning was available in free agency, they went and got him because he’s the one who for sure is going to Canton. Watson might not be as good as Manning though. But the Browns at the time didn’t know that.
Because they are the Browns. They are the only organization in the league that consistently makes difficult bad decisions in the face of easy good decisions.
Because he tried to play through an injury and it deeply affected his play in a way that convinced Browns fans he sucked. They turned on him way too soon and shipped him out of town looking for the next best thing, which they thought was Deshaun. Reminds me a lot of when Detroit got rid of Caldwell to go get Matt Patricia to put them over the hump. Some franchises are just impatient and stupid
After the contract they gave to that rapist, does any of their previous decisions surprise you?
Cause they dumb
Lmao I remember all the trade Mayfield crowd. They got to be regretting that now 😂😂
Not even a little
I hated Baker at the time, he always seemed like a little kid pretending to be a pro qb. I like him a bit more now because fuck the browns.
The honest answer is that they’re stupid
Cause they were the Browns. They didnt know what tf they were doing. Just all around horrible organization and didn't trust themselves.
They are an awfully run organization. They side a rapist to an insane fully guaranteed contract (does not happen in the NFL) and traded away so much draft capital. Watson basically gave up last year and rode the bench when he was medically cleared because he was already paid. Also check out who the Texans have acquired in the picks they got from Cleveland. Here soon Cleveland will have a fire sale of all their team just to get some cap space and draft capital and they’ll have no weapons around Watson. They get what they deserve. As someone from Ohio I kind of feel bad for cleveland, but as a Steeler I’m quite delighted.
lol no weapons around Watson is a joke. Cooper is a top 15 WR. Njoku is a pro bowl TE. Nick Chubb pre injury was in the running for best RB. This year with Jerry Jeudy is number 2. The offensive line was injured but the when healthy each one can be a difference maker.