MINNEAPOLIS -- Browns quarterback Baker Mayfield wouldn’t use the shoulder he injured two weeks ago against the Texans as an excuse for how he played on Sunday against the Vikings.
“It’s attached,” he said when he was asked if it was 100%. “I’m all right.”
Still, it’s hard to ignore the struggles over the last two weeks, especially when it comes to accuracy, one of Mayfield’s best traits.
Sunday’s game was a difficult one for the Browns’ fourth-year signal caller, who completed 15-of-33 passes for 155 yards and a rating of 59.5. It comes a week after he completed 19-of-31 passes against the Bears for 246 yards.
Before he was injured attempting to tackle Texans safety Justin Reid on a second quarter interception in Week 2, Mayfield had completed 30 of 39 passes on the season for 432 yards. Mayfield went back to the locker room after the play and popped his left shoulder back in, returning without missing a snap.
Mayfield finished the Texans game strong, but the Browns didn’t attack much downfield after their quarterback returned.
Naturally, the drop in production the last two weeks makes one wonder if Mayfield’s shoulder is causing him problems.
“Nah, it’s my left shoulder,” Mayfield said. “Throw with my right.”
Sunday’s game against the Vikings left a particularly bad taste, as Mayfield missed at least two opportunities to connect with Odell Beckham Jr., and sailed a handful of other passes high when he looked downfield.
“I have to pick it up,” Mayfield said after the game, “because if I think that piss poor performance is going to cut it, it’s not.”
Browns head coach Kevin Stefanski was asked about Mayfield’s shoulder, too, and wouldn’t use it as an excuse.
“We didn’t make (some plays) today,” he said. “It’s Game 4. We’ve got to get better. I have to get better and that’s just the truth. We just need to get better in some of these areas and I think we will.”
Mayfield said the issue on Sunday was his inability to get into a rhythm.
“There’s a lot of easy throws there that I think missed and situationally, get into running the ball and you don’t have a couple throws for a while, you just get out of that rhythm,” he said, “so I need to do a good job of taking advantage of my opportunities, staying on track. For me, I pride myself on being extremely accurate and today I don’t know what the hell that was.”
Late in the game, with the Browns trying to put the Vikings away, Mayfield missed on back-to-back throws to Beckham on third-and-6 with 4:01 left and then to Anthony Schwartz with 3:56 left.
“That’s the type of dagger that you need to have on offense to put it away, kind of like last week with Harrison Bryant’s far cross and it sailed over him,” Mayfield said. “Those are the things I’m not real happy with myself about, but our defense is playing well enough right now to save me from that. I’ve got to be better. It’s just flat out simple and there’s not much else I can say.”
The Browns defense held the Vikings’ high-powered offense -- a unit that scored over 30 points the last two weeks and has gone over 400 yards of offense every week this season -- to just seven points and 255 yards of total offense.
“Good enough for us to win when I’m playing quarterback like that,” Mayfield said of the defense. “Thankful they played like that.”
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