GREAT post! I share your opinion of Greg Cosell. I am glad he offered the reference to the upgrade in coaching.

I personally think the most notable difference is going to be Conklin and Wills. When I watch Mayfield from last year, I want to cry watching Robinson and Hubbard pretend to be starting NFL tackles. They routinely allowed pressure prior to the development of our route concepts. It threw Mayfield off when it happened, and it threw him off when it wasn't happening because he was anticipating it was.

Add in the penalty and sack issues constantly pushing the offense in to difficult down and distance situations, and we're already talking about serious issues with Mayfield developing as a result of the issues around him.

Add in injuries to Njoku, Higgins, Odell and Landry impacting basically the entire season. Add in Kitchens, etc. However, Mayfield made plenty of his own mistakes. Agree his footwork and pocket presence was an issue. Disagree on Mayfield not having many interceptions from poor reads, I think the season showed he still needs growth on his post snap reads and ability to find the right match up.

However, I am still confident he can be our long-term, franchise quarterback. I agree with Cosell on Mayfield being a Kirk Cousins + some kind of player - and I am a Kirk Cousins fan, so it is a big compliment. He just needs more time and experience to grow in to the position.

I will say, however, with this coaching staff and this much talent around him? He needs to be damn good or questions will have to be raised.

I'm definitely in a different camp, BDU: I have near total confidence in Baker. I truly do. I love the way the throws a football, and I mean on all fronts: He does have twitchy feet and movements, quick eyes. He has a compact, efficient release. He's naturally accurate, to that Brees level. And he has the big arm, bigger than either Jimmy or Cousins, the two guys who went off in this offense in 2019. Oh, also Tannehill.

For me, Cousins isn't the touchstone. It's Brees. They look SO much alike on the field, the way they move and throw. Same high school, same height, same nutty accuracy. I think Baker's raw tools are better, especially the arm strength at this point in Brees' career... or now, for that matter. But Brees has done it for 15 straight seasons, 68% completion, so Baker has to actually DO it. I get that.

I personally think watching last season to evaluate Baker is almost a waste because there were just too many issues for any young QB in a brand new offense to overcome. The things that were "wrong" about Baker can't be at all separated from those problems... and we never saw these "wrongs" from Baker before.

I'll just add: Not only was he uncertain of protection, always, but also uncertain of where his targets would be. They were not on the same page, period. And his #1 WR ranked 88th in the league in separating and that's never, ever gonna work.

Oh, fine: Also remember the ages of Drew and Jimmy when their careers truly started. Brees in his first season with the Saints and Jimmy last season, his first full year as a starter (and he went to the Super Bowl, answered that question). With few exceptions, a QB's true career starts at about 26 and a decade later, at 35, he's still not terribly close to retirement, could easily play five or six more.

Great thread, DF, thanks! BDU and Shep, I'm somewhere between y'all. I'm convinced Baker is a top-10 QB on his own but I do think, in the right offense, he can be schemed into the top 10, if that makes sense? To me, Baker -- at this point, at least -- is more like Dak: a guy with obvious skills but who needs major help around him to ascend. Neither can pull a team up the hill alone. Dak has gotten more help than Baker, to this point, so he's considered "better" but I do think Baker is a better leader, better competitor, and better thrower. Which brings us back to Cousins. Could Baker be a Cousins+? Hell yeah. Could his ceiling be Brees? I doubt it. But could Baker end up as some crazy hybrid of Cousins, Romo, Favre? Yeah. That sounds kinda great.

What I got from GC was that he compared Mayfield to Cousins because of the fact they will operate in the same system..not because they are comparable QB's.

Shep, I like Mayfield, but he is not 'yet' the precision passer that Brees is. Not entirely sure he will ever reach that level...but then again, his game is different. He has the bigger arm, so is far more likely to go deep...and therefore the percentage completion will likely never be in the Brees range.

My comp...more accurate Favre.

Favre is a career 62% completion rate...late in his career he did break 65% 3x...but mostly that 62% was what you expected. I think Mayfield will be a 65-68% thrower...and last year was a glitch. Favre also had a tendency to throw INT's...partially because he had so much confidence in his arm. Some would say cocky, I would say extremely confident. He suffered from tip/bounce INT's off of his own receivers due to them being surprised the ball was there. Mayfield has already shown that extreme confidence, and having players surprised by the ball. But I do think he will throw far less than Farve, due to his better accuracy and not quite the cannon.

Favre was also a mobile QB. A guy willing to take off...but usually in an attempt to extend the play, not to run. Still...willing to get the yards available with his legs. Mayfield's rushing is almost identical, in yards, average, and effectiveness.

Take a look at Favre in MN in 2009. Arguably one of his best statistical years despite his body starting to fail him. Guess who was the asst QB coach...Stefanski.

I get the Favre precedent and like it. I'm with Orlovsky that Baker IS accurate on a Brees like level, you can see the spot throws, NFL spaces and all that. Remember that he hit 70-ish three seasons in a row at the highest level of CFB.

I think he'll be in that range very soon, upper 60s and maybe 70. Especially in this offense that actually schemes people open.

In the end, he'll be Baker Mayfield and none of our precedents will be all that accurate. I could go with a Favre-Brees Brundlefly (!).

I never know where to list QBs who can carry a team. Like, Brady is arguably the best ever but if you don't protect him, he's done. Same for Peyton. Maybe Mahomes? That's the only one I can come up with. But just being multidimensional doesn't rank a QB over Baker for me... like, I wouldn't want Cam more than Baker. Or Brees, Manning, Brady, et al.

I just think Baker's an excellent QB, have zero regrets. I think he'll settle into a top 5 slot for a very long time. He has everything from arm talent to smarts to character/leadership to mobility. I don't see anything holding him back.

Saw Matt Miller (?) the other day say BB is a horrible GM, but his great coaching always saves him. It's like we've said a million times, the right HC/QB combo is the most common path to success.

I can't think of a candidate I've been more calmly confident about than Stefanski. I think it's a perfect fit for Baker, who like Stef, is cerebral with fire. Stef ads the dose of maturity young Bake needs at this moment in his development.

Then you look up to our front office, and the calm smart approach continues with AB and his staff.

Baker's dropoff to me, striked me as a symptomatic effect of a young player trying to do too much and without the proper de-facto foundation around him to really do that. Lackluster coaching, injuries/lackluster playmaking talent, OL not at the strength we are accustomed to. It's easy for me to see Baker having a "comeback" year, or even ascending to where he "should" be in year three. I just want to see more consistency, and that wasn't all on Baker. The weirdness of the issue is that a lot of the time it was, and those times hopefully the coaching staff has a plan in place for when those plays break-down for Baker... but it seemed that he's becoming easy to 'break' so to speak, for a defense. Flush him out of the pocket with pressure and he's gonna make mistakes. However, Baker was MOST accurate when he was under pressure. From a Yahoo article dated October: Mayfield’s calling card has been accuracy. That has left him this season. Pro Football Focus calculates adjusted completion percentage, which eliminates dropped passes, throw aways, spiked balls, batted passes and passes where the quarterback is hit as he throws. That should account for most things out of the quarterback’s control. Mayfield's adjusted completion percentage via PFF is 68 percent, which is 26th among 27 QBs with at least 150 attempts (Daniel Jones is last). That’s on him. But why the regression when in 2017 Baker was "elite" under pressure according to PFT... This ESPN offering was a good read.

Unsurprisingly, it was when the myriad of team discipline issues reared their ugly heads to derail the offense, and Baker, a lot of the time. Kitchens offensive coaching was simplistic and easy to plan for. Fixing those two things alone should help the Browns, and Baker Mayfield, look like a much different team.

In 2019 Baker faced the 4th highest blitz percentage, was hurried the 4th most...and got hit the 24th most (24x). The 3 QB's close to the same blitz pressure, all had over 30 hits, and 3 of the 5 had double the hits. In other words, had he not been Baker, he would have been killed. He also scrambled only 17 times...18th in the league...so this thought that he was bailing on plays is also a misnomer.

His pocket time...the time before pressure arrived...was 3rd lowest with 2.3 seconds. Not enough time. Period.

Yeah it's not Baker under pressure that's the problem, and that is weird to me. His accuracy otherwise was bafflingly bad according to the metrics so why the disconnect? As for the misnomer, perhaps its a hangover of his Manziel-esque labeling he had when we drafted him? (not saying it was an accurate label, simply that it did exist)

I must be looking at different data than you EE.

On PFR, he shows a 'bad throw' % of 18.1....ranking 14th...just behind Mahommes.

Interestingly, he is the 4th ranked QB on RPO's in yards, and 6th in Play action...and he is also near the top in YAC.

Yet somehow...his accuracy number is low...odd

Even Baker's worst stats can be explained: He and OBJ had the greatest number of errant deep throws in the league... but it wasn't Baker going Josh Allen and chucking it into the stands.

Add in another stat: OBJ was one of the least open WRs in the league, 88th in separation. That's 64 starters and 23 3rd WRs who were better. It's dreadful. So the "uncatchable throws" were because he was covered and Baker had been drilled to force it, something we all saw.

Aaaand guess what happens when you force deep throws to a covered WR? INTs.

It's also why I expect OBJ's targets to go down from 133, not up. Hooper alone is gonna eat into a chunk of those.

Recall this report:

"Monken would spend time on the field before games telling opposing coaches how bad things were with the Browns, calling the team a “total mess” and saying that Kitchens’ Sunday play calling generally steered away from most things that had been in the game plan from Wednesday-Saturday."

That's as far from ideal for our young QB as there could have been. Baker gets a mulligan, and some of it was on him, but it definitely wasn't all on him.

It's on him (too) in the sense that he couldn't overcome it all... but man, that's a whole lot to ask from a 24-year-old in his third offense in a calendar year. With WRs running the wrong depths and seeing different reads than their QB, dreadful protection and worse playcalling, facing an unprecedented schedule, a murderer's row of the best defenses...

Again, I'm just skipping it. I completely expect him to be the guy he was for four straight years prior to 2019.

We're not in different camps, JSS. I share your total confidence in Mayfield. Let's just sit for a moment on the fact we saw our quarterback under the worst imaginable circumstances in just the second year of his career, and he still put up almost 4,000 total yards and 25 total touchdowns. With all his receivers injured, his OL a mess and a coaching staff who were in over their heads, against a brutal schedule, he was still statistically closer to a "good" season for any quarterback than he was to a "bad" season for any quarterback.

I don't need to count how many franchise quarterbacks struggled far worse at this point in their career, and did so under better circumstances. For all the concern about how bad Mayfield was, he could sit out his third year and still be more productive than Drew Brees at such a point in their respective careers. The list of great quarterbacks who struggled worse at this point in their careers is a long one.

I agree with the Brees comparison, but it took Drew Brees until his 8th season to be the Drew Brees we see in Mayfield. I think he needs a couple more years to be that guy. I like Mayfield now, but Mayfield two years from now is going to be a significantly better quarterback.

Mayfield just needs time and development. Time to grow real chemistry with his targets, to develop a truly deep understanding of the offense which he is in, and time to grow more instinctive in terms of reacting to his post-snap reads.

With that said, the pressure is on Mayfield but it is on the team as a whole to improve. The record is often used against Mayfield, but as I've said before we went a stretch of like three games at the end of the season giving up over 500 yards per game on defense. Underrated is how many mistakes Mayfield made simply by being competitive and forcing the issue. When did he throw picks? 16 interceptions in losses, nine of those in the 4th quarter, seven after his 30th attempt of the game, eight on third or fourth down with half of those being 3rd and 8 or longer.

Mayfield is a quarterback who'll throw a pick trying to win rather than amass garbage time stats taking what he is given. I also remember several interceptions on a final ditch effort on throws right before half time, unafraid to give the ball back knowing there wasn't enough time for the opposition to do anything with it.

I'm not down on Mayfield. I just know he's still young, still learning and still perhaps not at a point in which we can truly see the best of him. He has to start cleaning up mistakes, and he needs to, but I don't have any regrets in his selection.

Sumbitch, you guys are nailing the content posts lately.

Awesome, Trent. Perfectly said. And yeah, Brees wasn't Brees before New Orleans, and became way Breezier as time went on. Imagine Baker with actual familiarity with his targets, some sense of timing and rhythm, atop the experiential advantages of seeing things a few times.

I'm also reminded of how Phil Rivers went from an absolute deer in the headlights against the blitz... to the guy known for eating blitzes for breakfast on a game by game basis. You just couldn't blitz him, as badly as you wanted to (because he's a farging statue).

Smart guys need information too. Phil got the requisite information and processed it, as we know. Gonna be fun watching Baker do that.

He's smart and dedicated like Brees and has that spot accuracy like Brees. They look really similar on the field and they're from the same exact HS. But Baker's arm is quite a bit bigger and his college career was quite a bit more epic. They seem about equally mobile, both more than enough. Brees timed faster but Baker looks a lot twitchier on the field.

It's a fun comparison but they're far from identical at this point in their careers.