Cleveland Browns Baker Mayfield may surge in the second half again
So-so to red hot in 2018
Hue Jackson‘s 2017 squad had gone 0-16 without Mayfield, partly because general manager Sashi Brown forgot to obtain a quarterback that year. He was hoping to have a bottom-four team that would have a great draft pick to select from a quarterback class touted to be the richest since 1983.
He need not have worried, but in any case, he was fired for not placating Jackson by acquiring backup quarterback A.J. McCarron from the Bengals. That statement sounds completely ridiculous, but it is absolutely true. That 0-16 could have justified a complete housecleaning down to the peanut vendors but for whatever reason Jackson was spared, although his play calling was judged to be defective, and it was. Truthfully, putting the ball in the air with DeShone Kizer was always a mistake no matter what the down and distance. So, he was forced to hire Todd Haley as an offensive coordinator. The 2018 team clearly showed some improvement with Haley’s offense, despite the dysfunctional relationship between Jackson and Haley which was doomed from the get-go.
Mayfield’s career started in Week 3 against the New York Jets in 2018, when he replaced an injured Tyrod Taylor and immediately torched the Jets, slinging the ball all over the ballyard and breaking the infamous record losing streak. After that, he cooled off and won only one game as a starter for Jackson in the first half of 2018. Overall, Mayfield’s first-half passer rating was 78.9, which would be close to the bottom of the NFL had it stayed there for the full season, but still a huge improvement over DeShone Kizer’s performance the previous year.
Anyway, they won two games and lost six with one tie, but that was not enough improvement, so both Jackson and Haley were canned at mid-season.
However, after they fired Jackson, Mayfield caught fire statistically and was one of the top quarterbacks in the NFL for the second half of 2018. Interim head coach Gregg Williams posted a 5-3 record with Mayfield spraying the ball to an assortment of receiving targets. His second-half passer rating of 106.3 was Bradyesque. His performances were that good.
The stats are presented on a per-game basis, since he played in 6 games in the first half of the season and eight in the second. One of the stats I hate is the quarterback’s win-loss record as if the other 52 players on the roster don’t contribute anything. Nevertheless, I have included that stat so that Colin Cowherd can ridicule old Baker about it. We know that the Browns have had losing seasons the past two years. An extra stat is average-yards-between-interceptions which is a good measure of how many yards the quarterback can accumulate before something bad happens. Weirdly, Mayfield threw six INTs in the first half and eight in the second half of the season, so for that season the yards-per-game and the average-yards-between-interceptions stats are exactly the same. That’s not a typo, just a fluke.
YEAR W L Com/g Att/g Cmp% Yds/g Td/g Int/G RATE Yd/INT TD/Int S/g
2018-1 2(1)* 4 21.7 37.2 58.3% 245 1.33 1.00 78.9 245 1.33 3.33
2018-2 5 3 22.5 32.9 68.4% 282 2.38 1.00 106.3 282 2.38 0.63
TOTAL 7(6)* 7 20.7 32.4 63.8% 266 1.80 0.93 93.7 266 1.93 1.67
*Tyrod Taylor started the Jets game, Mayfield finished. Key: Com/g =completions-per-game; Att/g = attempts-per-game, cmp% = completion percentage; yds/g = yards-per-game; Td/g = touchdowns-per-game; Int/G = interceptions-per-game, Rate = passer rating; TD/Int = touchdowns-to-interceptions ratio; S/g = sacks-per-game.
However, 5-3 was not good enough, so Gregg Williams was gone as head coach.