How good does Baker Mayfield actually have to be to stay with Browns?

How good does Baker Mayfield have to be, to stay with the Browns past 2021?

So, Cleveland Browns fans, how good does Baker Mayfield actually need to be in order to continue his employment with the organization? Expectations are very high for young quarterbacks for football fans in general. Whenever a quarterback is drafted in the first round, that is a sign of historical greatness, the so-called “franchise quarterback” who is annually selected for the Pro Bowl and who leads the team to multiple Super Bowls.

The presumption is that Mayfield will emerge in the second half of the 2020 season as  the Browns “franchise quarterback.” It could actually happen if the Browns win big, knock off Pittsburgh and Baltimore, and go deep into the playoffs. That’s what everyone hopes for, of course. Then Mayfield gets a contract for the highest salary in the AFC North, higher than even Ben Roethlisberger and Lamar Jackson, and everyone will be happy, especially Emily Mayfield.

But what if it does not work out quite that way? What if Mayfield is just good and not great? What if his interception percentage is too high and it is the defense and the running game that saves the team, rather than Mayfield’s passing? What then?

Or, to put it bluntly, what if there are other quarterbacks that the Browns front office believes are better than Mayfield? He was the first overall pick in 2018, but there are other quarterbacks from that draft class, such as Josh Allen or Lamar Jackson that some analysts have the opinion are better than Mayfield. If the Browns front office decides that they agree (just for the sake of argument for now, please, we will discuss the particulars later) does that mean that they must cut him? In other words, do the Browns have an internal rule that says if Mayfield is not among the very best he is going to be fired? If not, should they have such a rule?

What is a “franchise quarterback” anyway?

Much of this debate centers around whether or not Baker Mayfield is a true “franchise quarterback.” That term is enough to make Swagger, Jr. toss his doggie biscuits. It’s applied to everyone who is a quarterback drafted in the first round, plus most of the ones drafted later if they are telegenic and handle the media well.

There will almost never come a time when there is a unanimous consensus on any one quarterback. Perhaps you could argue that Patrick Mahomes is so good that no one can dispute that he deserves to be the highest-paid quarterback in the NFL.

However, let us also be aware that the man who drafted him — former Browns and Chiefs general manager John Dorsey — was fired for drafting him. The knocks on Mahomes were that he was a “system quarterback” from the Air Raid Offense of Kliff Kingsbury, definitely, a college kid offense that could never work in the NFL; the Texas Tech Red Raiders were only 6-7, so obviously the quarterback must not be all that good; the Big 12 plays no defense, so passing stats mean nothing from that conference; John Dorsey is addicted to acquiring quarterbacks.

Is that what you mean by a franchise quarterback? Now, by year four, when it was time to extend his contract, they pretty much figured out what they should do.

Being good enough to win the Super Bowl may or may not unify the team or the fan base behind the quarterback. Hall-of-Famer Kurt Warner went to the Hall all right, but only after first not being drafted, then cut by the Packers, and then being run out of St. Louis after winning a Super Bowl and losing one. He was also run out of town by the Giants, and then made it back to the Super Bowl with Arizona. Is that your definition of a franchise quarterback?

Or what about Eli Manning? The guy was having his jersey burned in the stadium parking lot in 2007, and a few weeks later was quarterbacking the World Champions after knocking off the previously undefeated New England Patriots.

Sometimes fans seem to think if a quarterback is drafted in the first round, that is a sure sign that the player will wind up in Canton. In reality, there is an average of about three quarterbacks drafted in the first round every season and some are just ordinary and some do not make it all.

Browns fans were chortling in 2017 that they had finally found their Franchise Quarterback in DeShone Kizer.  The kid was strong-armed, tall, athletic and tough.  I just wish he had stayed in college one more season.   We said the same thing about Johnny Manziel, who could improvise like Thelonius Monk.  Even Brandon Weeden was going to be a Franchise Quarterback because of his freakish arm strength, which we hoped would overcome his freakish old age.

The point is that the term “Franchise Quarterback” is next to meaningless because on the one hand the media and even football experts bestow this title on players who do not deserve it, while on the other hand, the experts sometimes miss astonishingly talented quarterbacks. We’re never going to get agreement on whether Baker Mayfield is a “Franchise Quarterback” or not. There’s no knighting ceremony at Buckingham palace, nothing to ease the concerns of pundits such as Colin Cowherd or Stephen A. Smith.

On the other end of the spectrum, some pundits suggest that Baker Mayfield may not even be the most talented quarterback on the team, and he needs to be benched now in order to save the season. That argument has calmed down as the Browns are now three games over .500 at 6-3, but let us consider that possibility briefly.