Cleveland Browns: What’s wrong with Baker Mayfield and how to fix it
By Joel W. Cade
Teams Adjust
The NFL often stands for an anachronism Not For Long. At the NFL level, Baker’s Air Raid deep ball first mentality will not last long. Not that it cannot be successful. But it cannot serve as an overriding philosophical approach to offense.
It took the Los Angeles Chargers to show Baker that he needs to rethink his approach to quarterbacking. They effectively took away the deep option on every play. Their game plan was to force Baker to hit is intermediate and short options. They wanted to make him dink and dunk the offense down the field. The Chargers had success.
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Right now Mayfield is playing in the NFL as he did in college. He is looking to the deep option first. If the deep option is not open, he is looking to scramble to create time for the deep option to come open.
The Chargers saw this tendency on tape. They decided that in addition to taking away the deep option, they would take away Baker’s scrambling lanes. They decided to hold him in the pocket and allow the pass rush to do its job.
The result was Baker’s self-professed worst loss in his life. He looked to the deep option every play in which there was a deep option. If that was not open, he tried one of two approaches. First, he would hold on to the ball to wait for that deep option to come open. Or second, he would try to scramble to buy time for the deep option to come open. Neither option worked.
Now that the blueprint is on tape. Baker will need to adjust to the NFL. This means he needs to rethink the way he plays quarterback.