Cleveland Browns: Dissecting the devolution of Baker Mayfield

Cleveland Browns biggest concerns with Baker Mayfield

The most concerning issue in 2021 was Baker Mayfield’s poor judgement and decision making during the second half of the season. While some of that could be attributed to his injuries, 100 percent of it is also between the ears. In the NFL, defenses will find ways to take away what you want to do, but great quarterbacks beat you mentally before they ever do physically. Mayfield failed at both this season.

This is where the franchise failed Mayfield. It is one thing to allow a player to try to gut through an injury, but it is another to allow that player’s performance to negatively affect the team. Once it was evident that Mayfield was unable to have a consistently positive impact on the offense, the signal caller should have been shut down.

Someone needed to be the adult in the room, and for whatever reason, the Browns brain trust allowed the inmates to run the asylum instead.

Over the course of his last six games, Mayfield only completed 103 passes out of 193 attempts for a 53 percent completion percentage with nine touchdowns and 10 interceptions. That’s unacceptable production from the quarterback position, especially considering the Browns were in still contention for five of those six games.

We know now that this was an issue, but what do they need to do going forward?