Baker Mayfield’s leadership style: Bravado or Bluster?

The Cleveland Browns drafted Baker Mayfield to be the leader of their franchise. And asking him to do that by being anyone but himself won’t work.

General manager John Dorsey hired Baker Mayfield to be Baker Mayfield.

The 1-31 Cleveland Browns that Dorsey took over specialized in turning victories into defeats and played with their puppy-dawg tails stuck between their legs.

Enter Mr. Mayfield.

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Dorsey knew exactly whom he was drafting with the first overall pick. In college, Mayfield was a flag-planting, crotch-grabbing, trash-talking, cop-evading, undersized cocky Heisman winner with a deadly accurate rocket arm who has never in his life been afraid to tell the world what he intends to do.

And that’s win, win, win, which he normally does, does, does.

Whether you like Baker or not depends on whether he’s on your team. Mayfield is a highly confident winner, plain and simple, and his hard work and focus on being the best is so infectious that it’s helped morph the Browns into a team who believes they will win.

Except a few Browns fans and plenty of football talking heads are unsure of Baker’s style. Some certainly don’t like how Mayfield called out his ex-coach Hue Jackson as fake after hug-snubbing him or how he stared Hue down after a 66-yard pass play to tight end David Njoku in the Cincinnati win (read the details in Randy Gurzi’s recent DPD article) or how Baker brazenly ‘hung sideline dong’ after his second touchdown pass in the same game.

One online complainer wondered how to explain Bakers’ blustery behavior to his 11-year-old son.

How about this — tell the kid that there are two types of leaders in this world. There are the quiet ones who lead by example and who let their actions do all their talking and then there are the ones like Baker Mayfield.

Both styles can be effective, just depends on what comes naturally for that person.

Some quarterbacks lead their team like an Otto Graham; others do it like a Joe Namath.

Some quarterbacks lead their troops like a Dwight D. Eisenhower; others are more like a George S. Patton.

Some quarterbacks front the band like a Willy Nelson; others strut around like a Mick Jagger.

A leader can’t be both styles at once, and if you’re the one you certainly can’t be the other.

Baker Mayfield is acting exactly how he was hired to act and to expect him to lead differently (Why can’t he be more like Sam Darnold?) is ridiculous and impossible.

Notice whenever the media asks interim head coach Gregg Williams or offensive coordinator Freddie Kitchens about Baker’s antics they smile and go on about how much they love his skills and swagger.

It’s because they know Dorsey didn’t draft an Otto or an Ike or a Willy, he hired a Namath, a Patton, the Mick freakin’ Jagger of professional football, so let’s not be so shocked whenever Mayfield struts all over the stage and shakes up the status quo.

Okay, maybe lose the Dong Hang move, sure, but the Stare Down gave me chills.

The culture of the Cleveland Browns needed desperately to change in 2018 and they found the player they thought could do it.

And now the Browns have been a team of growling and winning Dawgs because Baker Mayfield is getting his job done, and by Dorsey, he’s doing it the only way he knows how: by being Baker Mayfield.

And like him or not, that’s exactly what Baker’s been hired to do.