Panthers won’t hand anything to Baker Mayfield ahead of camp battle with Sam Darnold
Baker Mayfield’s arrival with the Carolina Panthers comes at a dead period in the NFL calendar. With training camp more than two weeks away, the quarterback has experienced a largely empty team facility with everyone on vacation and has only talked to most of his teammates and coaches on the phone.
He didn’t make any predictions for his new team in his first press conference since the trade from the Cleveland Browns, declining to say if the Panthers had the feel of a playoff squad.
However, he noted the team had good camaraderie and expressed his excitement to work with the other players and coaching staff. Mayfield faces a quick turnaround as he learns the Panthers playbook and battles for the starting quarterback job, the first step forward as he tries to improve from an injury-plagued and disappointing 2021 campaign.
“It feels like everybody’s on the same page and that’s a great foundation to build something special, so we’ll see where we can go with it,” Mayfield said.
The No. 1 overall pick from the 2018 NFL draft will compete with the No. 3 pick from the same draft, Sam Darnold, for the team’s starting job, Panthers general manager Scott Fitterer said.
Mayfield said nobody in the NFL has the mentality of being a backup but that he’s prepared to fill whatever role the team needs of him.
“We’re at this level because we compete to the very best … my intention is to become the best quarterback I can be,” he said.
Mayfield said Darnold reached out to him after the trade and helped him with finding a house. He looked forward to being with him in the locker room and challenging each other on the field.
He dismissed any notion of tension building between the two, saying the two have a singular goal of helping the team win, and they’d avoid doing anything to hinder that.
“If there was drama within that room, it’s going to permeate throughout the building and that’s just not going to be the case,” Mayfield said. “We’re not going to let that happen.”
Both enter the final year of their contracts. Darnold has an early advantage in the quarterback battle from being in the system as Mayfield only received his playbook Tuesday and knows he’ll have to study vigorously to catch up.
He has become practiced at learning new playbooks, although he did acknowledge that happened due to the unfortunate circumstance of having a revolving door of coaches in Cleveland.
The main difference between those experiences and his current challenge stems from the limited time he has to prepare for July 27, the first day of training camp.
“It’s mostly about terminology, just getting the new formations, the names of that down, the different names of the concepts … making those comparisons and continuing to grow in that,” he said.
Mayfield does have familiarity with offensive line coach James Campen, who coached in Cleveland during the 2019 season. The quarterback said that prior experience should help him with the offensive line’s protection schemes, which he called the hardest part of learning a new offense.
He complimented offensive coordinator Ben McAdoo, saying he coached some of the most efficient offenses in NFL history, and praised the coach’s system for its flexibility.
The scheme gives quarterbacks the freedom to take advantage of matchups at the line of scrimmage, Mayfield said, a feature of the offense he feels fits well with the talented skill position players the team has.
The Panthers offense struggled last year, finishing 31st in Football Outsiders’ offensive DVOA.
Mayfield played just 14 games last year and only threw 17 touchdowns to 13 interceptions, finishing with career lows in yards per game, quarterback rating and QBR. He was sacked 43 times, the most in his career.
He played much of the year with a left shoulder injury and admitted he was too stubborn to come out of games. In January, Mayfield had a successful surgery to repair a torn labrum. The Browns said the procedure also brings a four- to six-month recovery time.
Fitterer, who also noted Mayfield dealt with foot and rib ailments, attributed much of Mayfield’s struggles in 2021 to those injuries. The team went back and watched his 2020 tape and came away impressed.
Quarterback coach Jeff Christensen, who works with Mayfield, helped him adjust his throwing motion to make it less violent, he said.
Small tweaks in his mechanics have brought Mayfield big changes. He hasn’t thrown the ball this well in a long time, he said.
“(Mayfield and Christensen) just went back to the basics, started working with their footwork, their mechanics, and I think he’s really tightened that up,” Fitterer said. “I think Baker’s really confident and comfortable where he’s at right now. And I think we get the best version of him going forward.”
Mayfield looked inward amid the tumultuous offseason, focusing on his priorities to become the best version of himself. He knows this isn’t anywhere close to how he drew his career plan, but said he’s thankful as he looks back on it and remains excited about the future.
Through it all, he maintained that parts of his personality will remain. Fitterer called Mayfield fiery and competitive, saying players with that demeanor are key components to winning teams.
Mayfield’s fire is what got him here, the quarterback said, and he vowed that it’ll continue.
“That competitive nature, that’ll never go away,” Mayfield said. “If I do that, then I shouldn’t be playing anymore.”
This story was originally published July 12, 2022 at 4:24 PM.
