Baker Mayfield needs to stop talking and start playing

Baker Mayfield has been a lot of bark and very little bite this season. The Cleveland Browns quarterback needs to start playing better for his team.

After an embarrassing performance in primetime on Monday Night Football in Week 5, the Cleveland Browns will need to pick up the pieces after falling to the San Francisco 49ers 31-3 in Santa Clara. It was the worst showing of the year for the team and was arguably the worst performance of Baker Mayfield’s NFL career. He has to play better going forward for Cleveland.

On this week’s episode of Stacking the Box, FanSided‘s Matt Verderame, Josh Hill and Mark Carman dissect all that went wrong in the Bay Area on Monday night for Cleveland. The Browns have a lot of things they’ll need to fix, but it starts with Mayfield eating a fat slice of humble pie and playing like the No. 1 overall pick his team drafted out of Oklahoma in 2018 (4:12).

“He spent the whole offseason just talking and talking and talking,” said Verderame of Mayfield. “Hey, man. Go have a winning record. Get to a playoff game. You didn’t win anything in college, by the way. You won the Heisman, but you didn’t win a national championship.”

“They were a good team. Who cares? Oklahoma is good every year. So what? They were great with Kyler Murray. They’re really good with Jalen Hurts right now. What does it matter? Shut up.”

Verderame would go on to add that Mayfield had to transfer from Texas Tech because he couldn’t beat out Patrick Mahomes. Mayfield may continue to play with a gigantic boulder on his shoulder, but at some juncture, he has to realize that he’s not an underdog anymore. Cleveland took him No. 1 overall for a reason and that reason was to win football games for the Browns.

Cleveland will host the 4-1 Seattle Seahawks in Week 6. While we shouldn’t expect the Browns to overlook the visiting Seahawks in any capacity, this is a huge spot for Mayfield. He has said before that he patterns his game after another undersized signal-caller in the form of Russell Wilson.

Wilson is playing like an MVP right now and Mayfield is playing like a guy who got benched for Garrett Gilbert in a losing effort in Santa Clara on Monday night in primetime. If Cleveland wants to contend with the Baltimore Ravens in the AFC North this year, the Browns will need Mayfield to give them a chance to win against a worthy competitor like the Seahawks at home on Sunday.

Here are a few other topics that were discussed on this week’s episode of Stacking the Box:

• Hiring Freddie Kitchens was Plan B for the Browns (2:10).
• The 49ers still need to prove themselves (5:25).
• A breakdown of the dysfunction with the Washington Redskins (15:42).
• Jonathan Allen on the state of the Redskins after Jay Gruden was fired (18:20).

All this and more!

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