Try as they might, companies involved in the mining and creation of advanced quarterbacking statistics have yet to account for the passer having just been dropped off at the stadium on the NFL equivalent of a Greyhound bus with less than two days to read over the playbook.
If it were one day possible, could we somehow quantify what we just saw from Baker Mayfield outside of euphoric yipping sounds and smashed together flame emojis? Is there a number that could replace the cussing and laughing and hand-waving in the air when we describe a game-winning, last-second touchdown drive with just a 5.4% chance (according to ESPN’s live game odds) of being anything other than a silly reason to have stayed up so late glued to our streaming screen of choice?
Mayfield arrived in Los Angeles Tuesday, having been claimed off waivers by Sean McVay and rescued from the waning moments of a dying season with an interim staff in Carolina. The catch? He had to perform well on short notice in prime time with receivers he didn’t know, for a coach he’d met on an airplane four years ago, against a defense that had Maxx Crosby and Chandler Jones, protected by an offensive line made of collapsible pong tables. He had to watch his first two scoring drives die, one because his running back fumbled and one because his offensive lineman (whom he probably hadn’t met yet) shoved an opponent in the chest and cost his team a 15-yard penalty.
He had to take his game-winning opportunity from the 2-yard line with less than two minutes to play and no timeouts.
Heading into this game, we were all prepared to watch the Mayfield Rorschach test play out before our eyes. As a prospect, he elicits polar opposite opinions from supporters and detractors, like they couldn’t possibly be describing the same person. Likewise for people who watched his insurance commercials unbothered, and the other ones who chucked a remote at the television. Clearly, he is not for everybody.
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Saying that you either love or hate Mayfield was the easy way out before a night like Thursday, when it became impossible not to realize there’s some real talent there. When it became impossible for all of our Grinch-like hearts not to feel something for the guy who was dumped by the Browns in favor of a player suspended 11 games due to more than two dozen lawsuits detailing graphic accounts of sexual harassment and sexual assault, was forced to take a pay cut to play for Matt Rhule and was bounced to Los Angeles only after begging for his release. This was a cosmic spiking of the football. Had this game been against the Browns in Cleveland, the stadium may have split open and revealed the center of the earth out of the sheer power of poetic justice (we’ll settle for what we got Thursday, which was moving enough to rustle broadcaster Al Michaels from another game-ending monologue of poorly masked disdain for this slate of forgettable matchups). For one moment, we were all Mayfield as he, in a second of delirious celebration, head-butted one of his teammates despite the fact that he’d long removed his helmet, while the other person had one on.
It became impossible to say that Mayfield can’t start somewhere under the right circumstances in 2023.
Normally, we’d guard against this kind of hyperbole. We would back away from the keyboard for a few moments and allow common sense to enter the neural pathways. We wrote that Mayfield’s replacement in Cleveland, Deshaun Watson, wouldn’t be horrible forever after one forgettable start last week, so how can we assume Mayfield will be (or possibly always was) pretty damn good after one Thursday Night Football game that, for 55 of 60 minutes was battling for our attention with every plot-identical Hallmark Christmas movie on the cable box?
The answer is simple. This was a complete and total disaster scenario for almost any quarterback, regardless of experience. We’re not discounting the job defensive coordinator Raheem Morris did, down a handful of superstars, slowing down one of the hottest offenses in the NFL, and the way the Rams plugged Las Vegas on a decisive third-and-1 at the end of the game. Nor are we discounting some of the heavy lifting done by L.A.’s wide receivers, especially Ben Skowronek, who hauled in a table-setting 50-50 ball with seconds remaining. We are saying that NFL completions with no prior relationship between the quarterback and receiver, no prior familiarity between the quarterback and the coach, no working knowledge of the offensive line’s rhythms, weaknesses or tendencies, and no sense of how these plays will all time up are a minor miracle. Game-winning drives from the 2-yard line are minor miracles. Mayfield was conducting all of this madness.
Absent the right statistic to tie a bow on all of this, seeing a team build around Mayfield next year may explain what this game truly meant. Imagine betting against that now, after this.
