Browns Ravens opener: not a fair fight

    The Cleveland Browns continued a sixteen-year tradition this Sunday.  Unfortunately, that tradition is to not win their season opener.   Worse yet, just like last year against the Tennessee Titans, the Browns failed to even make it a game, falling by a score of  38-6.  

    You have to go back to 2004 when Jeff Garcia led the Browns to a win against these same Baltimore Ravens to find the last opening day victory.   

The best quarterback in the 2018 draft

    Six lousy points.   Odell Beckham, Jarvis Landry, Nick Chubb, Kareem Hunt, Austin Hooper and it yielded six lousy points.  Pathetic.

    If you followed the portion of the Browns training camp that was open to the public, this actually should not be surprising.   When Baker Mayfield and the first team offense couldn't move the ball against second and third team defenders, it smelled of trouble.  When Case Keenum and the second team flat out beat Baker and the first team in a scrimmage, warning alarms were blaring.  We hoped that when the tackling began, however, Nick Chubb and Kareem Hunt would start to rip off yards after contact and that would make things easy for the entire offense.  

    Why should we believe this?  Because with Kevin Stefanski the Browns finally have the guy they have been looking for since Kyle Shanahan, that's why.  Stefanski's the guy who showed in Minnesota that he will commit to the run until things crack open.   

    Freddie Kitchens and Freddie Kitchens alone was the albatross around the offense's neck in 2019, right?   He couldn't see the forest through the trees.  Things could only get better we told ourselves.  

    Sunday it looked like Freddie Kitchens had snatched George Clooney's body and it was Baker Mayfield who was having difficulty finding his receivers through one particularly mighty oak named Calais Campbell.

    While nobody should have expected the Browns to walk out of Baltimore with a win after only six weeks of practicing with a new coaching staff, the offensive showing of the Browns was disheartening.  Not only did they appear unprepared to play the Ravens, Stefanski seemed to lose his resolve to run the ball early and any semblance of a winning game plan was set ablaze as soon as things got difficult.

    This will get better.  It has to.  But the toughest lesson that Browns fans learned is that Lamar Jackson's MVP award was no fluke.  Right now Jackson is without question the best quarterback drafted in 2018.  We can't continue to delude ourselves otherwise any longer.   With the 32nd pick of the 2018 draft, the Baltimore Ravens selected a one-of-a-kind playmaker.  Jackson is the engine that drives the Ravens' offense that made easy work out of going up and own the field on the Browns defense.   

    Lamar completely neutralized any pressure the Browns attempted to apply and threw darts as his receivers broke open.   At other times he just threw his receivers open, delivering the ball into NFL passing windows.  And Jackson is making NFL stars out of Baker Mayfield's Oklahoma Sooner teammates whom we were told a few short years ago had Baker to thank for raising their level of play in college.

    Baker is a strong-armed, nifty, undersized quarterback who can throw accurately on the run when rolling to his right and who benefited from a great college system, a tremendous college offensive line, underrated skilled players surrounding him and from playing in a conference that allowed Mason Rudolph to post gaudy numbers.  He wasn't a top five overall talent any more than Marc Sanchez, Marcus Mariota or Mitch Trubisky.   

    That he was grossly overdrafted isn't to say that Baker hasn't shown any promise of being a productive NFL quarterback.   In fact, I'm confident that Kyle Shanahan, Andy Reid, Doug Peterson or Sean McVay could get more consistent play out of Baker than we have seen.  If the conditions around him are just right, I even think he could be a playoff quarterback.  But I'm also beginning to believe that Baker needs a top offensive play caller of this ilk to make him successful, even with a top-flight roster of skilled position players around him.  

    Baker is not a guy who will overcome mediocre play calling like Ben Rothlisberger did with Todd Haley.  He is not a guy that looks to have the mental horsepower to diagnose a defense.   He's excellent ripping it if his first read is there.   If it is not, his slow eyes show up.  Baker gets shifty in the pocket, he's slow with his progressions, and he tries to overcome being late by jamming in the ball with velocity.  To a large degree, it's the same reason why Sanchez did not make it as an NFL starter, despite having a comparable skill set to Baker.  After experiencing success in leading the Jets deep into the playoffs in his first two years, the "Sanchize" never took that next step in development.

    It's time that it started to sink in that Baker is not the type of transcendent talent that is going to make the players and organization around him better.  He's a guy with some unique tools that needs a lot of help while he tries to develop.   And simply surrounding him with talent is not enough.  Stefanski's play calling needs to be elite.

    McVay and Pederson have proven with Jared Goff and Carson Wentz that play calling can mask a young quarterback's limitations -- at least during the time that their affordable rookie contracts can allow the team to field premium talent around them.   But Wentz and Goff are also showing that when you pay them star money, the league gets a book on them, and there is less left over to spend on the supporting cast, the advantages disappear and even great play calling goes only so far. 

    It is Stefanski's job to get Baker Mayfield and this offense cranked up and to do it fast.  True, this is a new system, a new coaching staff, and  the Browns only had six weeks to put it together. So what? Dwayne Haskins and a Washington Football Team roster that doesn't sniff the talent level around Baker manged to put up 27 points, and Haskins engineered a come-from-behind win against a pretty decent Eagles defense.  

    Nobody will absolve Dak Prescott for Sunday night's narrow road loss to the Rams because he is working with a new offensive coordinator this season.   

    Daniel Jones will get ripped by his own city's media if he fails to break double digits in the scoring column against the Steelers, who tallied 20 interceptions last season.   Nobody will excuse him because he's learning a new system.  These are nothing but rehashed Tim Couch excuses.

    Six points of offense was not acceptable when Johnny Manziel was throwing to washed up versions of Dwayne Bowe and Brian Hartline or when twenty-year-old rookie DeSean Kizer was thrown to the wolves with Ricardo Louis and Kenny Britt.  Remember, Kizer didn't even get first team reps for most of his first and only training camp with the Browns.   

    Six points on offense is not acceptable regardless of Baker's limited time with this scheme.   

    If Mayfield gets the kind of contract he'll be looking for, he will never enjoy this level of talent that surrounds him again.   This offense has to fly now if it ever will with Baker at the wheel.   It will be Stefanski that gets Baker and the Browns' offense to that point or ushers him out.

    In three days, Mayfield will try to get healthy against the Bengals -- a team that Baker's former teammate Tyrod Taylor manged to defeat this week.   If Baker is not up to the task against the Bengals and a rookie quarterback who is on equal footing in learning a new offensive system under trying circumstances, there will be no excuses left to make.