At the turn of the decade, there was hope that Baker Mayfield and head coach Kevin Stefanski would get along and bring glory to the Cleveland Browns. Their 2020 campaign delivered an 11-win season, something that the franchise hadn’t seen since 1994.
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However, just one year later, Mayfield’s time in Cleveland came to an end. Nowadays, the former first overall draft pick is busy collecting divisional titles with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, while Stefanski has just three wins to his name since 2024.
According to Skip Bayless, the recent success of Mayfield further highlights shortcomings that have plagued both the Browns and their head coach for the better part of the last decade. “Kevin Stefanski kept messing Baker over,” the former host of Undisputed exclaimed during the latest episode of his self-produced and self-titled podcast.
“He kept dissing him to the media. Stefanski, He comes off like he’s a really solid guy. I don’t think he’s a really solid guy. He’s a blame deflector, a finger pointer, a kiss a** to the owner… He played dirty with Baker Mayfield… It got ugly between Stefanski and Baker. Somehow, Stefanski won that,” Skip added.
Given the current state of the Browns’ quarterback room, they wouldn’t mind having Mayfield back at the team’s facility. Of course, that’ll never happen. So the Browns will have to figure this one out on their own, and they will have to do it rather quickly to save this season.
Even though he’s a former Super Bowl MVP, Joe Flacco, Cleveland’s current QB1, is only capable of doing so much at the age of 40. The Browns are on a two-game losing streak to start the season. If that wasn’t enough, Flacco has also thrown for more interceptions than touchdowns.
Fans can expect to see Dillon Gabriel stepping onto the field at some point sooner rather than later. Unfortunately, there’s not much that suggests that a switch to Gabriel would bring about better production.
And even though he’s still one of the most popular rookies from this year’s draft class, the Browns’ front office seems to believe that the same is true with Shedeur Sanders as well. The former Colorado Buffalo managed to impress against the Carolina Panthers’ first-team defense in his preseason debut. But that it seems wasn’t enough to impress anyone in Cleveland.
At this point, the only thing that can save the Browns is patience. None of these three signal callers is going to turn it around overnight.
This is going to take a while. Skills need to be developed, snap counts need to be reassessed, and hard decisions will have to be made. Until then, however, it seems as if Mayfield will continue to have the last laugh over his former franchise.
