LOS ANGELES, Calif. — Baker Mayfield has seen the future, and the future is Justin Herbert, Josh Allen, Kyler Murray, Patrick Mahomes and the rest of the hotshot young quarterbacks taking the NFL by storm.
The bar has been set sky-high by up-and-coming players like Herbert, who beat the Browns in a 47-42 shootout Sunday at SoFi Stadium, and Mayfield will have to elevate his game to keep pace.
“To win a game like this, one that turns into a track meet, you have to have a superstar quarterback to win it,’’ Chargers coach Brandon Staley said after the game. “That’s what he is, he was fantastic in the game. That’s an awesome defense that he’s playing against, that defense is really good. …For us to play like we did today, it starts with Justin. [The supporting cast] allows him to go and be who we all know he is. You can’t win a game like that if you don’t have a player like Justin Herbert.”
Heading into the game, Staley, the former quarterback of the Dayton Flyers, praised Mayfield’s arm and demeanor, saying he doesn’t get enough credit for “how good a passer he is.”
But in the end, it was Herbert who outdueled him in a performance for the ages including 398 yards, four touchdown passes and a 9-yard rushing score.
While Mayfield rebounded in a big way from his bad game in Minnesota with 305 yards, 2 TDs and a 122.5 rating, he’ll need to find another gear to beat these sensational dual-threat passers. He’s got another one up next in his Oklahoma successor Kyler Murray, who has the Cardinals off to a rousing 5-0 start and will undoubtedly engage the Browns in another track meet.
While the Browns were flying home and wondering how they let that one get away, Allen was busy beating the Chiefs, 38-20, with a masterful performance in which he threw for 315 yards, 3 TD passes and rushed for a TD.
He vanquished the great Mahomes, whose Chiefs slipped to 2-3 this season and look beatable, especially if the Browns’ defense is healthy.
Then there’s Lamar Jackson, who’s taken his game up a notch this season and will be a tough out when the Browns face him in back-to-back games in Nov. 28 and Dec. 12 after the bye.
The Browns didn’t face many great quarterbacks in 2020, which helped their march to 11-5. The lineup included Jacksonville’s Mike Glennon, Pittsburgh’s Mason Rudolph, the Jets’ Sam Darnold and the Giants’ Daniel Jones.
This year, they have drawn Mahomes, Herbert, the Packers’ Aaron Rodgers, Murray and the Raiders’ Derek Carr, in addition to their two meetings each with Jackson and the Bengals’ Joe Burrow. Many of those QBs have engineered fourth-quarter comebacks against the Browns, including Carr, Mahomes, Herbert and Jackson, who beat the Browns by that same 47-42 margin last December at FirstEnergy Stadium in yet another classic QB duel.
But in today’s high-flying NFL, winning the shootout is imperative, and Mayfield must step it up in that regard and establish himself as more of a gamer in the pros.
The loss to the Chargers marked the 10th time in his career that he failed to pull out a fourth-quarter comeback, and on five of those occasions, he turned the ball over: four interceptions and a fumble, including the pick at the end of the loss to the Chiefs in the opener.
In his 50 starts, he has seven game-winning drives, about one for every seven starts. For comparison’s sake, Herbert now has six game-winning drives among his 20 starts, about one for every three times out. He has gamer written all over him and his first-year head coach knows it.
Mayfield has the defense (when healthy) and running game to help him pull out the big game, but as Staley noted, when the chips are down, you need the superstar quarterback to come up big, deliver in a big way and overcome the adversity of the rest of the game.
That’s not to say Mayfield can’t become that. He was hurt by some missed pass interference calls at the end of the Chargers game and a questionable PI against A.J. Green on fourth down that infuriated the Browns. But game-for-game, Mayfield needs to establish himself as a clutch player who make can magic in the biggest moments, like he did at Oklahoma.
He demonstrated it in the 37-34 victory over the Bengals last year in which he threw 5 TDs against that one fateful pick on which Beckham tore his ACL. He completed 21 straight passes in the second half, including the 24-yard game-winner to Donovan Peoples-Jones with 11 seconds left. That’s the kind of performance the Browns need to see consistently from their franchise QB and what he must aspire to. Ten losses out of 24 in which he could’ve put on the Superman cape of Mahomes or Tom Brady and pulled off the unimaginable.
The hallmark of a great quarterback is to face a great one head-to-head and beat him. Mayfield isn’t Mahomes and he’s never going to be. But with the Herberts, Murrays and Allens taking over the NFL, Mayfield will need to elevate his game in every way possible, and be just as dangerous as the rest of them to lead the Browns to a Super Bowl.
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