I fully support taking a stab at Baker. He seems like the exact player who thrives when he has something to prove. The guy was a walk-on at Texas Tech who started his freshman year because of an injury. In his first game in college he threw 4 tds, 413 yards and went 43-60 passing. That's just insane but when the guy had something he had to prove, he elevated his game. Then he went to the school he dreamed about playing at, Oklahoma, and was out of this world.
Then the first year in Cleveland, the whole city but even Baker all hated Hue Jackson, who rightfully was an idiot and was fully on display for the world in Hard Knocks, but once he was out, he had something to prove, and Cleveland was decent, he went 7-7 that season.
The problem for Baker is that when the expectations seem to elevate is when he fails to live to the hype, which leads to people hating him. Once Cleveland started looking half decent, the following year people were calling them Super Bowl contenders, and that's what I think was the problem. They had made the temporary head coach the full time coach, and that only contributed to the expectations rise. Then in 2020 once the chips were down again for the Browns & Baker is when he did pretty good for what the Browns asked of him they went 11-5, on a heavy run based team. They made Baker escalate his play in spots, and didn't ask him to be a heavy usage QB. But this last year, expectations rose again, also he played through his own injury, plus the team had tons of injuries too so things didn't go so well and they swapped him out for a sex offender instead.
So, just based on history, we should want Baker, who is now universally hated because this is when he thrives. I know its counter intuitive, but we get a pissed off Baker who wants to come in & prove the world wrong. Who wouldn't want that? He's going to be a free agent anyways, and if everyone is so high on next year's QBs in the draft, then why shouldn't we Let Mayfield Bake for a year?
