Baker Mayfield can only hope to be a great reclamation project in 2023
It doesn’t feel like that long ago that Baker Mayfield was the talk of the football world, for all the right reasons. Mayfield was dominant in his final season at Oklahoma. So dominant, in fact, that he won the Heisman Trophy, dazzled pro scouts at the 2018 Senior Bowl, and became the first overall pick of the 2018 NFL Draft. And the good news didn’t stop there for Mayfield.
He stepped in as the Browns‘ quarterback midway through a Thursday night debacle and never looked back. He set a rookie passing touchdowns record and was named the 2018 PFWA Rookie of the Year. By year three, the Browns were 11-5 and Mayfield looked like he could potentially be the savior of the franchise, but things went off the rails between 2020-2021.
Mayfield was traded to the Carolina Panthers for next-to-nothing this offseason, and although the Browns did him no favors by trading him super late in the process, Mayfield didn’t do his part with the Panthers, either. After five games, Mayfield completed less than 55 percent of his passes and has now been replaced by PJ Walker in the starting lineup for Carolina.
So what is next for Baker Mayfield?
Baker Mayfield will have some options in 2023
The good news for Baker Mayfield right now is that reclamation projects in the NFL are sort of en vogue. Ryan Tannehill started a bit of a trend when we saw his borderline miraculous resurgence in the 2019 season as he replaced Marcus Mariota as the starting quarterback with Tennessee.
Of course, now Marcus Mariota appears to be one of the latest and greatest reclamation projects as the Atlanta Falcons are surprisingly in first place in the NFC South and have the 6th-ranked scoring offense in the NFL.
Tannehill is not the first successful reclamation project in the NFL. People once thought Kurt Warner’s career was dead before a resurgence in Arizona. More recently, Geno Smith was battling with Drew Lock in Seattle for the starting job and it now looks like Smith is one of the top QBs in the NFL. To a lesser degree, we’re even seeing some good things from Daniel Jones in 2022 after a ton of struggles from 2019-2021.
Nobody should go into the 2023 offseason thinking that Mayfield can be their franchise’s savior as the Panthers did with Sam Darnold a couple of years ago, or even with Mayfield in 2022. Mayfield will be a free agent and some team is going to be able to get him for relatively cheap. There will be teams that miss out on the primary QB carousel or teams that want to bring in Mayfield to challenge a young quarterback.
Teams like the New York Jets could add Mayfield to try and push Zach Wilson depending on how bold they want to get in upgrading the QB position next offseason. One way or another, there will be at least a few teams that look at Mayfield and see his talent, and they’ll be willing to give him a shot to get things right in their program.
That’s how NFL teams are. Mayfield’s most important job now is being the best possible teammate he can be for PJ Walker, because NFL teams are watching that as well. They undoubtedly saw Mayfield on the sideline more pumped than anyone to see PJ Walker throw a game-tying touchdown pass to DJ Moore. Mayfield is a competitor and he undoubtedly wants to be out there on the field, but he hasn’t played well enough to warrant a team just throwing him out there at this point.
But come 2023, there will be NFL teams looking to find a short-term solution at the QB position and they will view Mayfield as a worthwhile risk-reward proposition, especially because he will be coming in as a free agent and not via trade.