Baker Mayfield shows promise as Browns’ franchise QB

Brian Billick prepared for seven Cleveland Browns starting quarterbacks during his nine-year tenure as head coach of the Baltimore Ravens. Turns out they all had one thing in common.

“None of them were very good,” said Billick, an analyst for NFL Network. “So that part of it made it easier.”

Billick hasn’t coached in the NFL since 2007, but his sentiment remains mostly true regarding the starting quarterbacks the Browns have employed the last 13 years. There have been 21 since 2008 and 30 dating to 1999, when they were revived as an expansion team after “The Move” to Baltimore four years prior.

Some were first-round draft picks, none were on the roster for more than five consecutive seasons and the Browns have toiled away in conspicuous irrelevance — qualifying once for the NFL’s playoffs in the last 21 seasons.

But alas, this season, with a spunky 25-year-old named Baker Mayfield, there’s promise amid a 5-2 start.

Mayfield, picked No. 1 overall in 2018, is the newest quarterback tasked with leading the Browns, who have the sixth-best record in the AFC and are on a path that could lead to their first playoff berth since 2002.

They’ll host the Raiders at 10 a.m. Sunday, one week after perhaps the best performance of Mayfield’s career: a 37-34 comeback victory over the Cincinnati Bengals featuring a franchise-record 21 consecutive completions, five touchdown passes and the type of quarterback play foreign to Cleveland the last two decades.

But Mayfield has flashed as much incompetence as brilliance during his two-plus years in the NFL, throwing interceptions in 26 of his 37 career outings and displaying immaturity en route to a 17-19 record as a starter.

Maybe Mayfield is the first true franchise quarterback to play for this incarnation of the Browns. Maybe he’s one capable of stopping the seemingly endless cycle of turnover and ineptitude.

Then again, maybe he’ll be like the rest of his predecessors.

It’s too soon to say.

“He has shown signs of being legitimate,” said Billick, who recently wrote a book profiling the quarterbacks in Mayfield’s draft class. “He’s going to have to now step up and do it against the Baltimores and the Pittsburghs. Doing it against Cincinnati is one thing, but can he step up in that limelight?”

The quarterback carousel

Esteemed columnist and author Terry Pluto has covered sports in Cleveland for more than 40 years. He contends that former Browns quarterback Tim Couch wasn’t exactly a bust. He was more a byproduct of circumstances befit for an expansion franchise.

Couch was the first player drafted by the expansion Browns with the No. 1 overall pick in 1999 and was surrounded by a hodgepodge of offensive linemen and skill players cast away by their former teams in the expansion draft. He was subsequently sacked 56 times as a rookie and 51 times in 2001, foreshadowing a broken leg in 2002 and an early retirement in 2003 amidst a myriad of injuries.

Pluto said he “always felt that had they just had a decent line and some things, that things would have gone better for him. … He might have been a guy that could have played 10 years and won a lot of games with them.”

But he wasn’t that guy. No one has been.

In 2007, the Browns selected Notre Dame’s Brady Quinn in the first round. He debuted as a starter in 2008 and was out of Cleveland after the 2009 season, compiling a 3-9 record along the way.

In 2012, the Browns selected Oklahoma State’s Brandon Weeden in the first round. He threw 26 interceptions in 20 starts and was waived in 2014 with two years remaining on his rookie contract.

In 2014, the Browns selected Texas A&M’s and Heisman Trophy winner Johnny Manziel in the first round. He started eight games and was waived in 2016 with two years remaining on his rookie contract — thereby ending his NFL career.

Cleveland also turned over coaches and general managers nearly as frequently as quarterbacks, creating a culture of instability not conducive for development. Eleven coaches preceded current coach Kevin Stefanski. All but two were dismissed by their third season. General manager Andrew Berry was hired in January. None of his nine predecessors lasted more than four seasons.

“You could see they were struggling to just get their footing as to what they were going to be as an organization,” Billick said. “And it was compounded by … this cycle of first-round misses at the quarterback position. … It just went on and on.”

Coaches and general managers were often conflicted about which quarterback to draft or develop, leading to the turnover that included veteran stopgaps at the end of their careers or late-round draft picks who weren’t necessarily supposed to play.

Couch started 59 games, the most of any Cleveland quarterback the last two decades. Mayfield has started 36 games. Former sixth-round pick Derek Anderson started 34 games.

Nobody else has started more than 21 games.

“Whenever you take over as a quarterback or a coach, you inherit all the sins and mistakes of the previous regime,” said Pluto, author of five books about the Browns. “It’s like marrying into a family that’s had a lot of dysfunction. … You walk into the family. ‘I didn’t cause any of that. But now it’s all on my back. And I’m dealing with it.’ So that’s what’s happening here.”

Turning the corner?

No rookie in NFL history has thrown more TD passes than Mayfield, who tossed 27 in 2018 to eclipse the previous mark of 26 held by Peyton Manning and Russell Wilson. But Mayfield regressed in his second season while playing for his third head coach.

Not exactly a surprise in Cleveland.

Hue Jackson was fired midway through Mayfield’s rookie season and interim coach Gregg Williams was ousted for Freddie Kitchens, who didn’t have previous head coaching experience and steered the Browns to a 6-10 record in his one and only season at the helm.

Mayfield in 2019 completed 59.4 percent for 3,827 yards, 22 TDs and 21 interceptions — resembling previous Browns quarterbacks more than a franchise quarterback.

Stefanski, an assistant for 15 years with the Minnesota Vikings, was hired to provide some stability.

“Now as I’ve gotten to know (Mayfield) and gotten to work with him and hopefully refine some things, he’s really taken the coaching,” Stefanski said. “Everything we’ve asked him to do technique-wise, progression-wise, doesn’t matter, he’s really taken to it. And he’s all in.”

Under Stefanski, the Browns are third in the NFL in rushing, averaging 157 yards. Mayfield as a result is averaging 28.3 passing attempts, down from 34.7 in 2018 and 33.4 in 2019.

His passer rating is up from 78.8 to 94.5. His QBR of 74.1 is far and away the best of his career. He earned AFC Offensive Player of the Week honors for his play Sunday against the Bengals.

Billick believes Cleveland’s run-first approach is tailored to maximize Mayfield’s potential and minimize his mistakes, though he’s eager to see how he plays against the better teams in the league before anointing him as the franchise’s long-awaited savior.

Raiders coach Jon Gruden already has seen enough.

“This guy is an excellent quarterback. He’s proven he can play in anybody’s system,” Gruden said Wednesday. “He had a different system last year. He’s got a different system this year. … This kid can play. He’s a great competitor. And what I love is when the game is on the line late, it brings out the best in him. He’s fun to watch, too. I like his style of play.”

Just not so much this Sunday.

Contact reporter Sam Gordon at sgordon@reviewjournal.com. Follow @BySamGordon on Twitter.