Sabermetric value analysis of Cleveland Browns quarterback, receivers
Looking deeper at Baker
If you thought this was going to be an article ripping Baker Mayfield for underperforming, this is the wrong article. Despite obvious difficulties with the Browns offense, Mayfield is 14th overall according to PFF. Although on paper his interceptions look horrific, a human grader can see that much of the time the protection has been poor and more than a few accurate passes have bounced off the receivers’ hands.
Now, look at what Mayfield gets paid. As a first overall draft pick, he weighs in at $7,427,950, which sounds like a lot of money and it is. But among quarterbacks, he is only the 27th highest paid QB in the NFL.
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Eli Manning, Marcus Mariota, and Andy Dalton are among the quarterbacks drawing a bigger paycheck than Mayfield. The 14th overall salary, incidentally belongs to Derek Carr, whose contract was the largest in the NFL when it was signed. So even though Mayfield has not been exceptional, so far he is a bargain.
Although most NFL salaries for each position follow an exponential function, the quarterback salary is not modeled well by an exponential curve fit, as had been the case for the defense reviewed in a previous article. Rather, the first 15 or so salaries are bundled together at the top. and then there is a dropoff between15 and 20, after which the salary curve tends to follow that true exponential.
At Mayfield’s 14th ranking, the exponential underpredicts the salary compared to the true value (Carr’s) at $22.5 million. Hence, in this case, $22.5 million is used as a better estimate of Mayfield’s value.
Many observers question why Drew Stanton is the 34th highest-paid quarterback in the NFL. Let’s hope we never find out. Stanton is on IR right now but could be brought back in case of an emergency.
This is shown graphically in the illustration at the top of the page. The brown arrows point to the actual 2019 salary-cap charges for Mayfield and Stanton. The orange area points to the salary of the 14th highest-paid quarterback in the NFL, which is what Mayfield arguably might make in a true free market structure.
Third-string Garrett Gilbert is ranked 71st in the NFL, and of course, there is no basis to judge his performance.