Cleveland Browns: What’s wrong with Baker Mayfield and how to fix it

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Baker Mayfield #6 of the Cleveland Browns (Photo by Jason Miller/Getty Images) /

Era of the Air Raid

There was a time in the NFL were teams would avoid drafting Air Raid quarterbacks. The knock on them was they could not read NFL defenses. It was deemed too labor intensive under the current bargaining agreement to teach someone to play quarterback at the NFL level. There was simply too much to teach is too short of a time.

But that changed when John Dorsey, then general manager of the Kansas City Chiefs, decided to draft then Texas Tech quarterback Patrick Mahomes. It was a risky endeavor because it was still unsure if an Air Raid style quarterback can succeed in the NFL. Then Dorsey doubled down on the Air Raid by taking now Browns quarterback Baker Mayfield. Both picks have made Dorsey look like a genius.

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So what has changed? First, the NFL has changed. The NFL has become such an offensive league that there are protections in place to encourage a prolific passing attack. Second, the college version of the Air Raid changed to incorporate more NFL style concepts and schemes. The two met in the middle and now there is a happy marriage. Credit Dorsey for being the father of the bride.

With the era of the Air Raid quarterback upon us, it would be wise to understand what the Air Raid attempted to accomplish. There are several excellent books on the Air Raid offense itself. But to get a real handle on it, I recommend Rich Hagritt and Joel Penner’s “Coaching the RPO offense”. It does an excellent job of playing the Spread offensive philosophy against the Air Raid offensive philosophy and how the RPO Offense incorporates both. Besides with RPO’s becoming all the rage, reading it will make you sound smart.

In short, the Spread looked to use spread formations to run the ball. The Air Raid looked to pass the ball all over the yard. The RPO wants to create open places to either run or pass by putting defenders in assignment conflicts.

The Air Raid offense that Mayfield played in wanted to push the ball downfield. He looked to hit the downfield play before the intermediate or check down. Thus, every play he wants to hit the long ball to score points. Big plays score points. This is a sound philosophy.

Mayfield was excellent with this philosophic approach because he has an excellent arm, excellent accuracy, and enough college-level mobility to buy time to open up the deep pass. He had to overcome size bias to show that an arm and accuracy can succeed.

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