Baker Mayfield: Kevin Stefanski won’t rule out competition at quarterback

Cleveland Browns head coach Kevin Stefanski says he supports Baker Mayfield but also wouldn’t rule out competition at the position

Until Baker Mayfield suits up in Week 1 with the Cleveland Browns, there are going to be questions about whether or not he will be the starting quarterback.

We’ve already seen that as the first two days of media availability included an update on Mayfield’s status by both general manager Andrew Berry as well as head coach Kevin Stefanski.

Berry said he “fully expects” Mayfield to be the starter in 2022 while Stefanski said he had confidence in him going forward.  However, he didn’t stop there as he also said all the players should know there’s competition, including the quarterback.

"“I think every day those guys understand that it’s a challenge,” Stefanski said, via Marla Ridenour of the Akron Beacon Journal. “In terms of the room and those types of things, I’m not going to get into that necessarily. But I think Baker, all of our players understand that it’s a competition. You’re getting challenged every single day. They treat every day like a challenge, so I’m comfortable with how that goes.”"

Of course, this could be all coach talk where he’s saying that everyone needs to be at their best every day. But his following statement could cast some doubt on whether that’s the case. Stefanski said Mayfield and the Browns offense were not limited by the shoulder injury.

"“It was not the shoulder. We were not limited in what we were doing with Baker as he worked through the injuries,” Stefanski said."

Throughout the 2021 season and so far in the 2022 offseason, the topic surrounding Baker Mayfield has centered around the injury to his left shoulder. Mayfield said all along that it wasn’t affecting his play, but his performances were up and down all year.

As soon as the season ended, Mayfield had surgery and the new focus has been on getting him healthy and back to the form we saw in 2020. The question now is whether or not that will happen even if he’s at 100-percent, especially since the head coach said that did not limit them.