Cleveland Browns: 3 important takeaways from huge Week 9 win
By Grant Puskar
Cleveland Browns Takeaway No. 2: Baker Mayfield was never the issue
It was getting hard to continue to back Baker Mayfield week after week after he continued to miss former Browns receiver Odell Beckham, Jr/ what seemed like more often than not. Clearly, some relationships just don’t work.
In this case, Beckham and Mayfield were just never meant to be. And to Mayfield, I think I can speak for a lot of Browns fans who are ready to apologize and realize that they were wrong. Again, this doesn’t mean Mayfield is perfect or that he played a perfect game Sunday. It just means that he’s good enough and he is going to be just fine moving forward.
Mayfield looked as confident and as poised as ever on Sunday, as he finished the game 14-of-21 with 218 yards and two touchdowns, including the 60-yard bomb to Donovan Peoples-Jones off of the beautiful play-action fake. While it’s easy to just highlight touchdowns, Mayfield’s most impressive throw of the game came on his other touchdown, throwing an absolute laser to David Njoku late in the game in between two defenders for the score.
I do still want to see how Mayfield can perform with the game on a line in a big-time spot in this post-Beckham era, as leading game-winning drives is something people who still question Mayfield and his ability always fall back onto. But, if the Browns would rather just win every game by multiple scores, that will work just fine as well.