NFL Week 3 Open Thread: The Baker and the Grinder

We have truly embarked on a new era:

Mahomes. Mayfield. Ryan Fitzpatrick. the future is bright.

— Mina Kimes (@minakimes) September 21, 2018

The mansplaining in the @ replies is why Trump won.

Anyway, I know what I’m about to type seems fantastical, but there’s a very reasonable chance that Hue Jackson not starting Baker Mayfield in Weeks 1 and 2 — games in which they tied and lost 3 against good teams, one on the road — could cost the Browns a playoff spot:

Nobody has ever stopped Baker Mayfield before. The New York Jets certainly weren’t going to be the first.

Mayfield, the no. 1 pick in this year’s NFL draft — the player we said should be the no. 1 pick in this year’s draft — made his pro debut Thursday night when Browns starter Tyrod Taylor went out with a concussion. The substitution could have been made without the injury. Taylor was 4-for-14 passing for 19 yards, and he took three sacks for a loss of 22 yards. When he dropped back to pass, the Browns, on average, lost yardage. When Mayfield came into the game, Cleveland’s offense transformed. By the end of his first drive, he’d already racked up more passing yards than Taylor. He finished the night 17-for-23 for 201 yards — and three of his incompletions were dropped passes. Pretty dropped passes.

Pro Football Focus gave Mayfield its highest game score of any rookie quarterback in a debut game since the site began grading QB play in 2006. Most importantly, Mayfield rallied the Browns back in a contest that seemed lost. The score was 14–0 when he entered, and, well, the Browns hadn’t won a game in 635 days. You could pencil them in for losses even in matchups in which they led by multiple scores.

OK, but Josh Allen is much taller and never disrespected the Bing THEEEEEEEE Ohio State University, so I’m sure Mel Kiper will be vindicated! (In addition to the stupidity of “[s]tats are for losers in my opinion. The guy won” on its face, Allen went…16-11 in the Mountain West Conference, despite having arguably the conference’s best defense in his junior year. But, hey, he did lead his team to a win over Central Michigan in the Idaho Potato Bowl, so you can just pencil in future NFL stardom for him, just like past winners such as Matt Linehan and Chandler Harnish.)

But, anyway, we can return to Mayfield/Allen later in the season. Let’s turn to a funnier target:

Here’s Gruden after the Raiders’ Week 1 loss to the Rams:

“When you can run the ball like they ran in the second half, it’s very hard to rush the passer,” he said at the time. “Obviously, we didn’t get to [Jared] Goff enough, and we didn’t get to [Todd] Gurley enough. We’ll take a good look at the reasons why we didn’t.”

And here’s Gruden after the Raiders’ Week 2 loss to the Broncos:

“We gotta do something [about the pass rush], we gotta do something,” he said. “We gotta get there. We gotta win some one on ones, maybe call some more blitzes. We gotta figure something out. We will.”

And here’s Gruden on Wednesday, four days before the Raiders travel to Miami to face the 2-0 Dolphins.

“It’s hard to find a great one. It’s hard to find a good one. It’s hard to find one,” he lamented with a straight face. “College football now, they’re not really dropping back to pass and throwing footballs anymore. They’re throwing laterals and they’re throwing bubble screens and they’re throwing read options. So you’ve got to train these guys. It takes a little time to learn how to rush the passer. We’ve got some guys that are in that process right now.”

I know! Did you see Monday Night Football last week? That Khalil Mack was a real game-wrecker! The Raiders could really use a guy like that.