Off-season thoughts (Vol. XXXV)

It's a road down which Baker Mayfield has traveled before. 

From Austin, Texas, where he was a high school star, to Lubbock, Texas, where he walked on as a freshman and starred at Texas Tech, to Norman, Oklahoma, where he walked on again at Oklahoma University and ultimately won the Heisman Trophy, to Cleveland Ohio, where he became only the second quarterback to lead the born-again Browns to the playoffs in 2020, it's been a well-traveled road.

He knows this road well. 

And now, after four eventful seasons in Cleveland, he is Willie Nelsoning it to Charlotte, N.C., where he can once again knock another chip off his shoulder as a member of the Carolina Panthers after the Browns made him an ex-Brown Wednesday morning.

He made a lot of friends in Cleveland, thrilling countless fans in that unforgettable playoff season, becoming the only quarterback since the return in 1999 to win a playoff game, coming thisclose to advancing to the AFC title game.

After all those quarterback failures during a two-decade span that saw the once-proud franchise become the laughingstock of the National Fotball League, Mayfield was the franchise quarterback this long-suffering fandom had longed for.

He suffered through numerous idiotic coaching changes in his first two seasons before Kevin Stefanski arrived and then he flourished. This past season, he was victimized by some terrible thinking by the front office which ultimately paved the way for the Carolina deal.

A bad (non-throwing) shoulder injury early in the season robbed him of his ability to throw the football with any degree of accuracy. He was fitted later with a harness on the injured shoulder which seemed to make matters worse. The club floundered. That's when the critics showed up. 

Mayfield by then was a half cripple (from a football standpoint) and the medical staff kept green-lighting him for the starting lineup when it was blatantly obvious he should have been placed on injured reserve earlier. (And no, I'm not a doctor nor do I play one on the Internet.)

Working with a wide receivers group that had become one of the worst in the NFL with injuries (Jarvis Landry) and defections (Odell Beckham Jr.), Mayfield wasn't even close to being the same quarterback who led the Browns to the playoffs. It was tough to watch.

Teammates praised him for playing under those difficult physical circumstances. A lot of good that did. He was sacked a career-high 43 times in 14 games, including nine times in the penultimate game of the season against Pittsburgh. After that game, Mayfield wisely decided to get the surgery.

By then, as it turned out, the Browns had made the decision to move on from Mayfield, although they publicly insisted he was still their starting quarterback and gave no hint Deshaun Watson was on their radar. 

The acrimony that has accompanied this little chapter in Cleveland Browns history will ultimately fade. Mayfield will go to training camp later this month with the Panthers and, it says here, will win the starting job.

He's too smart, savvy and determined to fail. Now that he knows his new team opens the 2022 season at home against the Browns on Sept. 11, odds are better than even he will be in charge of the offensive huddle.

He reportedly has fully recovered from his shoulder surgery. If that's the case, you can also bet he will show Browns fans he's not nearly as bad a quarterback as they think he has become. It will be a fascinating matchup the schedule makers had no idea would turn out this juicy.