The final minutes of Sunday’s contest saw a meeting of stoppable force and movable object, as the Cleveland Browns defense was tasked with preventing Baker Mayfield and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers from scoring and likely winning the game. Luckily for the Browns, some less desirable traits of the former number one overall selection were on full display Sunday afternoon.
If there there two areas of near-constant conversation during Mayfield’s time in Cleveland it was accuracy on deep passes (accuracy in general was spotty at times in Cleveland), and failure to perform down one score in the 4th quarter.
It was not a particular great outing for Cleveland’s former quarterback, routinely missing on passes downfield, in addition to having some pretty questionable accuracy throughout. When the ball was catchable, placement was far from adequate, a pattern Browns fans know all too well. Mayfield can sail passes from time to time, but this seemed to more frequent than usual, possibly hinting at a larger issue that may not be publicly known as of yet.
Even with Mayfield missing targets repeatedly, the Bucs still had a chance to take the lead late, but this too would end up as another failure to come up big when it counts.
Throughout his tenure in Cleveland, Mayfield’s inability to perform in the 4th quarter down one score has been well documented by those actually willing to criticize the Browns’ former signal caller rather than hop upon the Baker Bro bandwagon, viewing any type of critique of his play as an attack on his character.
Like it or not, this played a huge role in the Browns exploring other quarterback options. Committing the type of money Mayfield was looking for at the time and has subsequently received from the Buccaneers was unjustifiable at the time and the early returns appear to also look that way with Tampa Bay sitting at 0-2 to start the year.
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