Browns Diary, Week 17: Missing Baker

Miami 20, Cleveland 3

OK, it has been a while since we’ve done this… but here, suitable for framing, is every Browns starting quarterback since the team returned to Cleveland in 1999 and their record (I’ll bold those with winning records—it won’t be hard):

1. Baker Mayfield: 29-30

2. Tim Couch: 22-37

3. Derek Anderson: 16-18

4. Brian Hoyer: 10-6

5. He Who Shall Not Be Named: 9-10

6. Charlie Frye: 6-13

7. Colt McCoy: 6-15

8. Brandon Weeden: 5-15

9. Joe Flacco: 4-1

10. Trent Dilfer: 4-7

11. Jacoby Brissett: 4-7

12. Kelly Holcomb: 4-8

13. Jeff Garcia: 3-7

14. Brady Quinn: 3-9

15. Case Keenum: 2-0

16. Jake Delhomme: 2-2

17. Jameis Winston: 2-5

18. Johnny Football: 2-6

19. Tyrod Taylor: 1-1

20. P.J. Walker: 1-1

21. Robert Griffin III: 1-4

22. Dorian Thompson Robinson: 1-4

23. Seneca Wallace: 1-6

24. Doug Pederson: 1-7

25. Jason Campbell: 1-7

26. Josh McCown: 1-10

27. Jeff Driskel: 0-1

28. Bruce Gradkowski: 0-1

29. Kevin Hogan: 0-1

30. Thaddeus Lewis: 0-1

31. Nick Mullens: 0-1

32. Connor Shaw: 0-1

33. Spergon Wynn: 0-1

34. Austin Davis: 0-2

35. Ty Detmer: 0-2

36. Ken Dorsey: 0-3

37. Luke McCown: 0-4

38. Cody Kessler: 0-8

39. Deshone Kiser: 0-15

That’s… something. I will say that I desperately hope the Browns start Bailey Zappe in their final game of the season in Baltimore for three reasons:

Reason 1: That would give the new Browns an even 40 starting quarterbacks.

Reason 2: Zappe would add the rare letter-Z quarterback to their roster of glory.

Reason 3: Zappe is unquestionably better than Sunday’s starter, Dorian Thompson-Robinson. There’s no doubt in my mind about that. DTR is, by all accounts, a nice young man with a good attitude, and our guy Kevin Stefanski* seems to love him. DTR is also very clearly not within five zip codes of being an actual NFL quarterback.

*Quick disappointment/frustration check: Did Kevin Stefanski again this week, after the Browns’ dispiriting 20-3 loss to Miami, talk about being disappointed and also frustrated? Yep and yep! He began his loser press conference like so: “We’ve got to come away with a win, we’ve got to come away with taking care of the football, putting ourselves in position to go find a way to win, and we didn’t do that. That’s the disappointing part. The results are what they are, that’s frustrating.” Our guy Stefanski is nothing if not consistent.

I give you the full list of quarterbacks today because it’s very clear that the most successful quarterback in new Browns history is Baker Mayfield. Nobody else is really even close. Well, I’ll grant you that Case Keenum is 2-0 as a Browns starter with a 95.3 passer rating—and he’s also excellent as the backup who backs the truck into the driveway in that commercial—but thinking of quarterbacks who made more than a cameo appearance, Mayfield stands alone.

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Baker has, as you can see, won more games than any Browns quarterback. He also threw 29 more touchdown passes than any other Browns quarterback, he threw for almost 3,000 more yards than any other Browns quarterback, he did about 200 more television commercials than any Browns quarterback, etc.

In 2021, though, Mayfield had a super-rough year. He played most of that year with a partially torn labrum, and receiver Odell Beckham Jr. was kind of a pain in the neck and a major distraction, and our guy Stefanski didn’t seem to know quite what to do with the offense he had built, and the offensive line was a mess, and Mayfield seemed a bit lost, and the Browns lost a bunch of close games, and quarterbacks always take the lion’s share of the blame for close losses.

Anyway, it was right then, in 2021, that Browns’ management went into full-fledged panic mode. It’s important to remember the context: The Browns had tanked for multiple seasons in order to rebuild the team. They had gone 3-13, 1-15 and 0-16 in consecutive years. They had hoarded a million draft picks. They had built a team that they felt sure was a Super Bowl contender… but, in order for them to actually be a Super Bowl contender, they needed a Super Bowl-level quarterback.

In 2021, they became convinced that Baker Mayfield was not that guy.

I often talk about how much I, as a Browns fan, envy the year-in, year-out consistency of the Pittsburgh Steelers. I totally get that many Steelers fans might feel trapped by that seemingly exitless consistency; this year’s Steelers look an awful lot like pretty much every Steelers team of the last decade—win more games than you lose, make the playoffs, lose in the playoffs, wash, rinse, repeat.

But that looks like heavenly bliss to a Browns fan. What I envy about the Steelers is that they don’t ever, ever, ever make emotionally rash decisions. Everybody knows that they’ve had only three coaches since 1969. Well, how does that happen? It happens because the Steelers stuck with Chuck Noll through his first three seasons, all losing ones. It happens because the Steelers stuck with Bill Cowher, even when they lost their mojo in the late 1990s. It happens because the Steelers keep sticking with Mike Tomlin, even though, from what I can tell, a lot of their fans would love someone new.

They stick with those coaches because they trust their own judgment. When the Steelers went 7-9 and 6-10 in back-to-back years in the late 1990s, management undoubtedly asked: Can we do better with another coach? And they decided: No, Bill Cowher is a great coach, he’s our coach, and what we need to do is give him a better team to work with.

You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. (Joe Sargent/Getty Images)

The Browns took Baker Mayfield with the first pick in the 2018 draft. It was a deeply considered decision—the draftniks were very much divided among Mayfield and Sam Darnold and Josh Allen and Josh Rosen (Lamar Jackson also came out that year). The Browns had countless meetings, arguing for and against each and every one of them. I’m not saying that Mayfield was the right choice—I mean, you can’t say they made the right choice when Allen and Jackson were both available—but I am saying they made their best choice. Nobody can see the future. You can only take your best shot.

Mayfield was the Browns’ best shot, and he sparked some life into the team, and he also had his share of growing pains. In 2018, he finished second to Saquon Barkley as Offensive Rookie of the Year. In 2019, he threw 22 touchdown passes and 21 interceptions. He played with brass, and he made mistakes, and his accuracy was questionable, and he was pretty famous, and in 2020, in front of empty stadiums, he took a gigantic step forward and led the Browns to their first playoff appearance in almost 20 years. Then, in the playoffs, he threw three touchdown passes to beat Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh, and he played with verve as the Browns actually scared the Kansas City Chiefs a bit in Kansas City. It was pretty magical.

Then came 2021 and the injuries and struggles.

And the Browns, being the Browns, freaked out and dumped Mayfield and traded for the nightmare that will never end.

On Sunday, just before the Browns were destroyed for the fifth straight week, Baker Mayfield was incredible as the Tampa Bay Buccaneers routed Carolina and put themselves in position to win another NFC South title. Mayfield is having an astonishing season. He’s completing 72% of his passes. He’s second in the NFL in passing yards (4,279) behind only Joe Burrow. He’s second in the NFC with a 107.6 passer rating. He has thrown an utterly astonishing 39 touchdown passes—the Browns’ record for touchdowns in a season is 30, set 44 years ago by Brian Sipe.

You can certainly argue, if you want, that he never would have become this quarterback if the Browns had stuck with him. You can certainly argue, if you want, that Mayfield needed to hit rock bottom—needed to get traded by Cleveland, released by Carolina and then released again by the Rams—in order to figure out who he is and what he’s about. All that could be so.

But, for me, the Browns’ panicking after the rough 2021 season, giving up on Baker Mayfield, greedily making the most ill-advised trade and signing in the history of the National Football League, all of that just fits what this team is about, and what it has been about for 25 years.

Do you want to hear something amazing? The Cleveland Browns in 2024 have thrown more passes than any team in the NFL. This team with one viable receiver, tatters for an offensive line, and three desperately flawed quarterbacks has thrown more passes than Burrow’s Bengals, Mahomes’ Chiefs, or even Mayfield’s Bucs. If you want to say, “Sure, that’s because they’re always losing,” yeah, that’s true, but they’ve thrown 100-plus more passes than the Jaguars, who are also always losing. They’ve thrown 50 more passes than the New York Jets, who are always losing, and they have the great Aaron Roberts at quarterback.* They have thrown more passes than the Raiders, the Giants, the Bears, way more than the Titans or Patriots, and they’re always losing, too.

*The Great Aaron Roberts.

Do you think it was the PLAN for the Browns to throw more passes than any team in the NFL with the personnel they have? Do you think that was how they designed this team in the offseason? Do you think that’s what they worked on all during training camp, what they talked about in all of their offensive meetings? Do you think, at any point, they said: “What we want to do is throw the ball more than any other team in the NFL—we think that’s our best path to victory?”

Um, no. This is a rudderless team that just goes where the wind takes them. When they start losing, they throw and throw. When one quarterback fails, they try another. When a part of their plan fails, they throw out the whole blueprint. When the going gets tough, they freak out.

I don’t know what happens if, one day three years ago, our guy Stefanski or someone else had spoken up and said, “You know what? We took Baker Mayfield with the first pick in the draft. We developed him. We won with him. This was a rough season, for sure, and the fans are panicking, and we’re panicking, and it’s tempting to hit the eject button and go get a flashy new quarterback who hasn’t played in a year and has 24 pending sexual misconduct lawsuits against him. But I say we stick with Baker. He’s our guy. He plays his heart out. Let’s put some talented people around him and trust him.”

No, I don’t know what happens. They’re the Browns, so you can assume that would have failed, too. But one thing I do know is that I watched Baker Mayfield carve up that terrible Panthers defense, watched him go 27-for-32 for 359 yards and five touchdowns, and I thought, “Wow, wouldn’t it be nice if the Browns had a quarterback like that?” And it was no fun remembering that they did.