BEREA, Ohio – The Cleveland Browns have yet to practice this week. Their head coach has COVID-19. Their training facility remains closed. Several starters are on the reserve/virus list. And their quarterback hasn’t thrown a pass since Sunday.
Baker Mayfield acknowledges the unprecedented challenge the Browns are facing in their first playoff appearance in 17 seasons. But for him -- and the rest of the team -- the goal Sunday night in Pittsburgh has not changed.
“Just adapt and play,” he said Thursday. “It’s win or go home. Whoever we have out there, we’re counting on them and we believe in (them).”
The Browns themselves believe in the resiliency of Mayfield.
The new front office doubled-down on the former No. 1 overall pick, despite his struggles last year. They committed more than $60 million in guaranteed money to better support Mayfield with upgrades to right tackle (Jack Conklin), tight end (Austin Hooper) and backup quarterback (Case Keenum). They expended the 10th overall pick (Jedrick Wills Jr) on a cornerstone blindside protector. And they hired Kevin Stefanski to install an offense befitting Mayfield’s skill set.
Mayfield has made the most of the investment.
He quarterbacked the Browns to their best regular-season record in 26 years. He ranks ninth in the league in QBR, buoyed by a stretch from Week 7 to Week 15, when only MVPs Aaron Rodgers and Patrick Mahomes had better QBR ratings. He trails only Rodgers in QBR off of play-action, as well.
But even though Cleveland is in the playoffs for the first time since 2002, doubt that Mayfield is the Browns franchise quarterback has stubbornly lingered from the outside.
Sunday night at Heinz Field, where Cleveland is just 6-44 over the last five decades and owns a miserable 17-game losing streak, Mayfield can effectively extinguish that doubt.
Win a playoff game on the road, shorthanded from Stefanski down to his offensive line, and Mayfield won’t be viewed with the same skepticism, even by his harshest critics.
“I know he’s fired up,” said offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt, who will be calling the plays for Stefanski on Sunday. “He’s playing at a high level, has been for the second half of the season. To me, the light is on and it came on somewhere over course of that. He’s really answered the bell well. He’s playing as well as anybody.”
The Browns will need Mayfield to be at that level to have any hope of toppling the Steelers.
The last time Cleveland traveled to Pittsburgh, Mayfield was picked off for a touchdown in his first passing attempt, enroute to arguably the worst game of his career and a 38-7 Steelers drubbing.
Mayfield, however, has been a different player since.
The following week, he set a franchise record with 21 consecutive completions before throwing three go-ahead touchdowns in the fourth quarter of a shootout victory in Cincinnati.
In Week 13, Mayfield tossed four touchdown passes in the first half along on the way to a 41-35 victory at AFC South champion Tennessee.
Then, Mayfield went off in the fourth quarter in a wild Monday Night Football shootout with Baltimore, with the Ravens surviving, 47-42.
But even as Mayfield and the Browns surged late in the year, the bandwagon outside Cleveland has been doggedly slow to fill. And after Week 16, when Browns fell to the lowly New York Jets, and Mayfield struggled after losing his entire receiving corps to COVID and close contact protocols the day before the game, the detractors re-emerged.
They won’t go away if the Browns lose Sunday. Even if Cleveland goes the entire week without conducting a single practice. Even if more key players test positive for COVID-19 before kickoff. Even if down the road the Browns pick up Mayfield’s fifth-year option this offseason, which, to anyone paying attention, figures to be mere formality at this point.
But if Mayfield leads the Browns to an unthinkable playoff stunner against a defense loaded with ferocious and rested pass-rushers, he’ll have a signature win difficult to parse apart. And Cleveland’s week from hell will culminate into one of the franchise’s greatest victories.