Former Browns offensive lineman Joe Thomas made a bold statement on Sunday. In response, someone tried to refute it, but without putting their name on the denial.
Via Mary Kay Cabot of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Thomas said on his podcast with Andrew Hawkins that Browns quarterback Baker Mayfield turned down a long-term deal worth $30 million per year in 2021. An unnamed source tells Cabot that the contention is “100 percent false” and “totally erroneous.”
The truth could be somewhere in the middle. While Cabot points out that the Browns and Mayfield’s agent never engaged in “substantive” talks on a potential extension in 2021, it’s entirely possible that they communicated sufficiently to know that, for example, Mayfield was looking for something in the range of $40 million per year and the Browns were hovering in the neighborhood of $30 million per year. As a result, there would have been no reason to have full-blown negotiations.
So maybe Thomas is saying that Mayfield could have had $30 million per year, if he’d wanted it. But he didn’t.
Based on what was known entering the 2021 season, he should have been aiming higher than $30 million per year. He’d just taken the Browns to the final eight, and he (and the Browns) gave the Chiefs everything they could handle in the divisional round of the playoffs. They did it again in Week One. Only after Mayfield injured his non-throwing shoulder while making a tackle after throwing a Week Two interception against the Texans did things start to go sideways for Mayfield.
Mayfield has a high degree of confidence in himself. It’s hardy implausible to think the Browns would have been willing to pay him $30 million, and that Mayfield stubbornly would have pressed for much more than that.
At this point, it doesn’t matter. Mayfield and the Browns will divorce. The only question is whether and to what extent the Browns will be paying his $18.8 million guaranteed salary for 2022. At a time when the Browns are trying to delicately extricate themselves from the relationship with minimal financial impact, it makes sense for the Browns to say nothing that would further alienate Mayfield -- including giving credence to the idea that could have had $30 million per year in 2021, and that his refusal to accept such a package has since blown up in his face.
