Will Baker Mayfield cement himself as a top-10 QB this year?

[MrOaktown_56]

On 9/4/2021 at 3:58 AM, AkronsWitness said:

Derek Carr is the vanilla ice cream of quarterbacks. Sure he gets the job done but he is just so uninspiring. That and he's so incredibly afraid to throw deep and Lor make a mistake so he either sails the ball 35 yards OB or takes entirely too many sacks. He's somewhere in between Alex Smith and Teddy Bridgewater.

He's confidently conservative.

As far as Kyler, I feel like he's gotten more hype than he probably deserves. He's made some wow throws, but has been bad as many times as he's been good but people seem to just overlook his terrible games for whatever reason

 

This is flat out wrong. By every metric he's one of the best deep passers in the league. He has a bigger arm than Baker too if we're being honest. Carr was top 10 in pretty much every metric last year (passer rating, DVOA, DYAR, passing yards, etc.) and at his best went toe to toe with the Chiefs offense playing with the 31st ranked defense in the league.

If you're going off the two Broncos games where he was sloppy, then sure. But he played lights out for a lot of last season. And like @Forgesaid, Baker has not even put himself ahead of guys like Carr and Cousins, who are certainly better passers than Baker is right now. Once he does that, MAYBE he has a case for the top 10. But he's just not there yet.

[Soggust]

1 hour ago, AkronsWitness said:

I think everything is pretty explainable.

His rookie year he set the rookie TD record in only 13 games--he looked really good.

His 2nd year was a disaster with coaching clearly being the worst in football.

His 3rd year he started slow learning a new system and they relied on the run game until he was comfortable. Since week 7 of last year he was a top 3 QB in the NFL after they opened up the playbook.

I'm too lazy to look up comparisons, but for arguments sake even if he was statistically top 3 in the league after week 7, let's be real - this sample size is realistically 3 GREAT games that we are talking about.

I think it's fair to withhold judgment until this year (which I see as a make or break season for Baker).

[FGK]

1 hour ago, Forge said:

I didn't make fun of anyone, but thanks for proving my point

 

2 hours ago, Forge said:

Man, the insecurity in this thread is something else

Either you have a weird definition of constructive conversation, or some sort of amnesia. Have you had recent head trauma?

[FGK]

3 minutes ago, Soggust said:

I'm too lazy to look up comparisons, but for arguments sake even if he was statistically top 3 in the league after week 7, let's be real - this sample size is realistically 3 GREAT games that we are talking about.

I think it's fair to withhold judgment until this year (which I see as a make or break season for Baker).

Definitely fair to withhold judgment. But the sample size is 12 games including playoffs. I think the top 3 he's referring to is PFF grade.

[Forge]

7 hours ago, FGK said:

 

Either you have a weird definition of constructive conversation, or some sort of amnesia. Have you had recent head trauma?

I made an observation about the attitude of certain posters in the thread and my opinion of it. It was not mocking nor was I making fun of people.  It was merely an opinion. 

I'm sorry that you were triggered by my opinion. I will continue to keep my opinion on how I see  this thread and you can continue to be triggered by it. 

I hope your day becomes more tenable and you can put this behind you. 

[FGK]

18 minutes ago, MrOaktown_56 said:

Baker has not even put himself ahead of guys like Carr and Cousins, who are certainly better passers than Baker is right now. Once he does that, MAYBE he has a case for the top 10. But he's just not there yet.

Yeah, strongly disagree here. Obviously it's dependent on whether or not you buy the last 12 games of 2020. But he was absolutely better than both of those guys during that period. Less volume for sure, so I guess you can argue it wouldn't translate with more?

[FGK]

1 minute ago, Forge said:

I made an observation about the attitude of certain posters in the thread and my opinion of it. It was not mocking nor was I making fun of people.  It was merely an opinion. 

I'm sorry that you were triggered by by my opinion. I will continue to keep my opinion on how I see  this thread and you can continue to be triggered by it. 

I hope you're day becomes more tenable and you can put this behind you. 

You call people insecure for disagreeing with you and then expect them to be fine with it? How exactly do you think this is okay?

[Forge]

1 minute ago, FGK said:

You call people insecure for disagreeing with you and then expect them to be fine with it? How exactly do you think this is okay?

I called nobody insecure. I said the insecurity in this thread was something else. 

How you took that comment is on you. Like I said, I hope you can move past it. Have a good day. 

[LETSGOBROWNIES]

3 hours ago, Forge said:

Man, the insecurity in this thread is something else

Listen hussy…

I get the skepticism, truly I do, but when in a *reasonable* offensive system, and not playing with OBJ (I can’t explain the issue either other than they lack anything that resembles chemistry), Baker has been very good to elite. Check the stats if you don’t believe me.

Baker needs a strong OL and decent running game to succeed, but with those he doesn’t just succeed, he excels.

LIS, I get why outsiders doubt him.  But if you watch him play week in, week out, he’s 100% got the goods.  Nothing I can say now will change people’s opinions though.

[Soggust]

3 minutes ago, FGK said:

Definitely fair to withhold judgment. But the sample size is 12 games including playoffs. I think the top 3 he's referring to is PFF grade.

Has to be PFF (I don't have a sub to check), because purely statistically he certainly wasn't.

[LETSGOBROWNIES]

30 minutes ago, Soggust said:

I'm too lazy to look up comparisons, but for arguments sake even if he was statistically top 3 in the league after week 7, let's be real - this sample size is realistically 3 GREAT games that we are talking about.

The stats are legit, as are the stats that has him top 4 in passing DVOA the last half of his rookie year.

Baker has been dealt a rough hand with Hue year 1 and Freddie year 2.  Hue was horrific from the jump, Freddie was fools gold.

30 minutes ago, Soggust said:

I think it's fair to withhold judgment until this year (which I see as a make or break season for Baker).

I think this is completely fair tbh.

I just think the reason Browns fans are so bullish isn’t necessarily blind homerism (there’s some of that), but just seeing him play and seeing how good he can be when asked to simply do his job.

[LETSGOBROWNIES]

1 minute ago, Soggust said:

Has to be PFF (I don't have a sub to check), because purely statistically he certainly wasn't.

He had 21 TD’s and 2 picks the second half of the year and playoffs.

There’s no metric where that isn’t really damned good.

[Forge]

2 hours ago, AkronsWitness said:

I think everything is pretty explainable.

His rookie year he set the rookie TD record in only 13 games--he looked really good.

His 2nd year was a disaster with coaching clearly being the worst in football.

His 3rd year he started slow learning a new system and they relied on the run game until he was comfortable. Since week 7 of last year he was a top 3 QB in the NFL after they opened up the playbook.

Just because something is easily explainable doesn't mean that the explanation is correct, or 100% responsible for the event as a whole. There are a lot of things that I could provide easy excuses for. 

I could easily explain that the horrid coaching, surrounding cast and schemes sunk Alex Smith's first 6 years in the league. I would think you would agree with that, right? But that also didn't make him great or anything when he got away from that situation. He was pretty solid / good. The situation likely exacerbated his own weaknesses just like Baker had his made worse by the staff (and offensive line) in 2019. But you can't throw that out. Like, Baker was just sometimes bad. It's similar to the Carson Wentz apologists last year. Baker sometimes just made really bad plays independent of the staff / team around him. We aren't really going to pass blame on his awful shovel pass INT against the Pats on to the awful coaching staff (though it was a bit of a flukey play admittedly, I'm just using it as an example). So what I know is that in 2019, Baker was not good. The coaching was not good. And I'm pretty sure the line was not good. But what percentage was what? 

What if the offensive line was actually the majority culprit to his play in 2019? What does that mean? Historically he hasn't been great against pressure, so that's not unreasonable. He was well protected in both 2018 and 2020 and played well.  Derek Carr has been pretty good with a good offensive line. He was an MVP candidate (according to some) the year he broke his back, and the last two years he's been 10th and 11th in epa among QBs, 9th in epa per play last year among QBs, etc etc. He's dreadful when that team has a bad offensive line. 

He did often look good his rookie year, and nobody can take the fact that he secured that record. However, his figures were also buoyed heavily by just three games - two against Cincinnati and one against Atlanta. That's 10 TDs, 0 INTs against the #30 & #28 rated defense in the league over 3 games and he had a lot of cookie cutter defensive games. What does that mean? I have no idea. It's good, it's bad...it's just context. 

His third year he played pretty well and had some major highs. But now we are talking about shrinking the sample size down even further with regards to the premier play we are using to judge him. Go back and look at the back half of 2019 Jimmy G's season. Similar thing. I Just can't put that sort of emphasis on such a short sample and it's existence isn't necessarily atypical for QBs who are "okay". That's what I was saying before - there's some crazy variance in play once you get to this tier of guys. Alex Smith was considered an MVP candidate half the season in his last year of KC. 

I just don't know how we are getting to a point where he's "cementing himself" as a top ten guy when we aren't even actually sure of what he is yet. 

[BayRaider]

49 minutes ago, MrOaktown_56 said:

This is flat out wrong. By every metric he's one of the best deep passers in the league. He has a bigger arm than Baker too if we're being honest. Carr was top 10 in pretty much every metric last year (passer rating, DVOA, DYAR, passing yards, etc.) and at his best went toe to toe with the Chiefs offense playing with the 31st ranked defense in the league.

If you're going off the two Broncos games where he was sloppy, then sure. But he played lights out for a lot of last season. And like @Forgesaid, Baker has not even put himself ahead of guys like Carr and Cousins, who are certainly better passers than Baker is right now. Once he does that, MAYBE he has a case for the top 10. But he's just not there yet.

Carr is only “one of the best deep passers” in the league because he only throws if a guy is wide open. This super inflates his deep passing metrics on sites like PFF. He is not a guy who is gonna throw a tight throw deep, nor is he good at it. 

[Forge]

2 minutes ago, LETSGOBROWNIES said:

He had 21 TD’s and 2 picks the second half of the year and playoffs.

There’s no metric where that isn’t really damned good.

It is completely absurd...particularly the INT rate. That's just stupid. Obviously there will be regression, but that's pretty sick. Especially when you consider that one of the games was a rainstorm and one was with Baker's dry cleaner playing WR