Baker Mayfield Gets Brutally Honest About Browns
Baker Mayfield got brutally honest about the Browns on Friday.
Speaking to the media before Super Bowl LIV, Mayfield acknowledged that he did not set the team up for success with his constant attention-seeking.
Mayfield noted that 2019 was a struggle and a learning experience during an interview on ESPN’s Get Up.
“It’s a humbling experience. It’s a different ballgame,” he said.
“Let’s just be honest, I put my foot in my mouth a lot this past year. And I’m going to internalize that, and I think that’s the way I need to handle it.
“Rest in peace Kobe, but that’s the way he did it. He motivated himself, he didn’t talk a lot, he talked to his teammates, drove them to be better people, better men.
“So that’s the way I need to handle it. I don’t need to respond to the things that don’t matter, the things that don’t help us win.”
Following a successful rookie campaign, Mayfield regressed badly in his sophomore season. He went from a year where he threw for 27 touchdowns and 14 picks on a 93.7 passer rating to 22 scores and 21 picks on a 78.8 passer rating.
That is a substantial decline.
Baker: “Let’s just be honest, I put my foot in my mouth a lot this year.”
— Jake Trotter (@Jake_Trotter) January 31, 2020
“I think where it comes along is I’ve always had a chip on my shoulder but I always played with an edge,” he said.
“But it didn’t come around to people noticing it until the cameras were all around, until it was a big deal and I was getting a spotlight and people made a big deal of that.
“I just have to be me, I have to continue to do that. But I don’t need to reply to the stuff on the outside.”
As a result of the team’s underwhelming performance in 2019-20, the Browns fired Freddie Kitchen and installed Minnesota Vikings coordinator Kevin Stefanski as head coach.
It remains to be seen if Stefanski will be able to help Mayfield turn his career around.
“We in our own building set our own expectations extremely high, much like everybody else thought, so it was disappointing for us,” Mayfield continued.
“I wouldn’t say that the outside noise affected us really. We might have paid a little bit of attention to it. But the talks that we had inside that locker room inside our building we’re all about winning, they were all about heading in the right direction.
“So as soon as it went wrong, that’s was the frustrating part. It was like, what is going on here? We all want this thing to work but it’s not. Trying to find the problem and figure it out, it just kind of slipped past us.”
Will Cleveland be able to turn things around in 2020? Time will tell.
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Charles Kruger has been credentialed to cover two Super Bowls, four NBA Finals, and one World Series. A 20-year veteran in the sports world, he has sources spanning the NBA, MLB, NFL, UFC and NASCAR. Currently residing in Los Angeles, Calif., he is Game 7’s go-to source for rumors surrounding the Lakers, Clippers and Dodgers.
