Count me among you who think that the Panthers fleeced the Browns when they traded for Baker Mayfield. Cleveland gets a conditional fifth-round pick in 2024 plus they get to pay $10.5M to Mayfield to play for Carolina. And guess what? The Browns open on the road in Charlotte. You can’t even make this sh*t up, but with the Browns, you come to expect it.
The Cleveland media is spinning the deal as a trade that was necessary. I don’t disagree but what they’re leaving out is that it was necessary only because the Browns’ management made it that way! They painted themselves into a corner when it became public that Cleveland was among the teams in the running for Deshaun Watson. The Browns claimed that they wanted an “adult” quarterback.
We all knew right then and there that the juvenile Progressive Insurance spokesperson would push back. We knew that his tenure along the shores of Lake Erie was over. And so too, did Watson’s handlers.
They played owner Jimmy Haslam and his merry band of cronies like the prom queen might play a star-struck, dateless school boy when Watson’s negotiators publicly announced that the Browns were out of the running for their client. Panic set in. The Browns knew that Mayfield was moving out of FirstEnergy Stadium and they’d be without a starting quarterback. So they then offered Watson a record-setting deal ($230M guaranteed) and ponied up a king’s ransom in draft picks for the rebuilding Texans, which included the Browns first-round pick for 2022, 2023 and 2024.
That’s insane compensation for a quarterback who has a career record of 28-25. That’s insane compensation for a quarterback who could potentially not suit up for a single regular season game for two full seasons if Watson gets a one-year suspension for his massage parlor shenanigans. Funny that the Browns wanted an “adult” quarterback but instead got one with a fetish for freaky “adult entertainment”.
So to add insult to injury, the Browns, still in that cozy little self-inflicted painted corner, unload Mayfield for a 2024 fifth-round pick. The 2018 No. 1 overall pick could only attract a fifth-rounder, two drafts from now, AND they have to pay $10.5M to boot. Ravens GM Eric DeCosta got a fifth-round pick in 2020 from the Vikings when he traded K Kaare Vedvik to Minnesota during the summer of 2019.
And some radio hosts on Baltimore’s toxic sports station want to throw shade on DeCosta?
Back during that same summer when DeCosta made the Vedvik trade, I wrote a piece on RSR destroying Mayfield. Browns fans ripped me for it. I quite enjoyed it because I was certain that in time, I would be proven right. The jury didn’t even have to deliberate.
We pay attention to the Browns because they represent 25% of the AFC North. And in doing so, we’ve all learned a bit more about the certainties of life in America…
Death.
Taxes.
And the Browns doing Browns things.
