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

Is Baker the most talented quarterback on the team?

This is almost a stupid question, but Case Keenum is way underappreciated as a passer. Like Mayfield, he is not a huge player at 6-1 and 210 lbs, and moreover, he’s not as elusive as a scrambler. Nevertheless, he has great football smarts, and if he gets the ball airborne, he is deadly accurate. Given adequate protection from a stout offensive line — and the Browns have a stout offensive line — Keenum has a full season in the Stefanski offense in Minnesota and an 11-3 record as a starter with a 22-7 TD-to-INT ratio and a passer rating of 98.3.

However, gigs in Denver and Washington were less successful. You don’t suppose quarterback stats depend on the players and coaches around you, do you? Keenum has proven he can succeed in the Stefanski system and there’s no reason he cannot succeed in Cleveland in the Stefanski system.

For that matter, if former Browns third-stringer Garrett Gilbert gets additional playing time in Dallas and continues to impress, the Browns could likely outbid the Cowboys this offseason and bring him back, because the Cowboys salary cap is an ugly mess.

This begs the question: If Keenum can succeed and gets paid at the level of $6 million per season, why do the Browns need to pay $30 million per season or more for Baker Mayfield? Hopefully, this question remains moot and Mayfield remains healthy for most if not all of the remaining snaps this season.

Yet almost no sensible NFL analyst believes that Keenum should get the nod over Mayfield. First of all, Mayfield has an uncommonly strong arm. Looking at Mayfield, he doesn’t appear physically intimidating and sometimes sportscasters assume that he does not have a strong arm. This is not true. He has one of the fastest ball times recorded.

Josh Allen has the unofficial record with 62 mph. Baker Mayfield is second at 60 mph. Logan Thomas also hit 60 mph in 2014. But not Josh Rosen (59 mph) or Sam Darnold (he was so good, he evidently did not even need to throw at the Combine).  In case you are wondering, Patrick Mahomes didn’t hit 60 mph at the Combine, possibly because of a different radar gun set up that year, but he is widely believed to be comparable to Allen. We aren’t saying that Mayfield has a better arm than Mahomes, but he’s close.

Mayfield has also been durable in his career.  Hopefully, this brag will not jinx him, but he has not missed a game due to injury at Oklahoma or in Cleveland.

He’s posting numbers that are okay, but not necessarily great, below average in yardage and touchdowns but he has cut down on interceptions. Generally in the quarterback rankings, he is found about 20th. On the other hand in the second half of 2018, he was top five.

In the first half of 2019 under Freddie Kitchens, he was bottom five. So there’s some room for interpretation there, but in all likelihood, the answer is yes, Baker Mayfield is clearly the best quarterback in Cleveland, but Case Keenum is starting caliber also. Keenum can win in Cleveland if he is needed.

So what do you do with the quarterback besides give him a top-five contract or run him out of town? Well, what do other teams do with starting quarterbacks? The answer is that they try to win with what they have. Sometimes teams win with great defense and Trent Dilfer, Brad Johnson, Joe Flacco or Nick Foles is the quarterback instead of one of the Mannings or Tom Brady. Teams don’t just give up if they do not have the best quarterback.

There is no giving up in football.

Instead, they have to sign the best quarterback option available to them and find some other way to win. So what do those quarterback options look like, in dollars and cents?