Cleveland Browns, Baker Mayfield: To play or not to play?

Baker Mayfield has taken the Cleveland Browns and the city of Cleveland by storm. But is it time to put him on the shelf as the team plays out the string?

Shortly after the Pittsburgh Steelers beat the New England Patriots 17-10 to all but eliminate the Cleveland Browns from the playoffs, the comments on social media began. Some were in the form of a question, “Should the Browns sit Baker Mayfield the last two games of the season?” and some were declarative statements that the Browns would be incompetent bordering on irresponsible if they risked injury to Mayfield by playing him in two “meaningless” games.

The Cleveland Browns will be one of the hottest stories this off-season, but for very different reasons than who they will be taking with the first overall pick in the draft. The Browns are, perhaps, the most desired job for head coaching candidates. When has that sentence ever been said?

The biggest reason for that is Baker Mayfield. Yes, Nick Chubb, Myles Garrett, and other young players that are under team control make this an exciting opportunity, but it’s Mayfield that seals the deal. So I understand the concern that Baker suffering an injury, such as a torn ACL, that would threaten any or all of next season, is legitimate. But does that make it the right thing to do?

The argument that “other teams do it” is sort of like when your parents said (and rightfully so) if everybody else was jumping off a bridge, does that mean you should too? There could be reasons not to start Baker Mayfield the last two games, but because “everybody else is doing it” is not one of them. Here then are three reasons to sit Baker and three reasons to start Baker.