Indianapolis, IN (92.3 The Fan) – Baker Mayfield has been a busy guy this offseason, and not much of it has to do with football.
While that has some fans and critics up in arms and worried that Mayfield isn’t dedicated enough following a stellar rookie season, take a deep breath and step back from the ledge for a second.
Mayfield was simply following instructions.
“The one thing I told him when he left the building was I wanted him to get away from football,” Kitchens said Wednesday at the NFL Combine. “This time last year he had been training already for two months and then we leave here, he continues to train for the draft and then we get into OTAs, minicamps, training camp, so it was like a year and a half process for him almost.
“He needed to get away from football and he certainly has.”
Mayfield has done a variety of interviews, including nuzzling an emu on the Late Late Show with James Cordin, vacationed with Saquon Barkley and is set to get married in July.
The Browns’ first-year head coach has stressed to his quarterback, players and staff that there is life outside of football and they need to live it.
“On our team, it’s just like I tell our coaches all the time, I want them to have balance in their life, all right? If you don’t have balance, if you’re all this, you’re going to take away from this,” Kitchens said. “Well, what did your family do to deserve to be shortcutted. We’re always going to talk about balance with our players, with our coaches. We want them to have balance because that’s when we’re going to get the best out of them on the football field is if they have balance in the rest part of their life.”
Kitchens is trying to prevent Mayfield, and even his coaches, from getting burned out.
He expects the time away will do Mayfield some good and the expectation is that Mayfield will return on April 1 for the start of the offseason program refreshed.
Many young quarterbacks will hire a QB guru to work with in the offseason, usually prior to the start of the offseason program and then in the time between the end of the veteran minicamp in June and start of training camp in July, but Mayfield won’t be one of them.
“No, I’m not going to have any guy swiping a broom at my feet in the ocean, that type of quarterback training,” Mayfield said last month at the Greater Cleveland Sports Awards. “I don’t believe in that.”
And Kitchens is fine with that too.
“I'm not discounting it at all. I would just say I would never prop somebody up to go work with somebody like that,” Kitchens said. “That's up to them. I think we can get him ready to play starting April 1 until September, whenever the first game is. If we can't, they need to find the new coach.”
Kitchens was disappointed that Mayfield, who set a Browns rookie franchise record with 3,725 passing yards and an NFL rookie record with 27 touchdown passes, didn’t win the NFL’s Offensive Rookie of the Year award.
Some believe Mayfield and the Browns might be better off following the snub, but not Kitchens.
“I thought he deserved it,” Kitchens said. “I like to see people get what they deserve, rather than trying to use something negative and turn it into a positive. I’d rather him just get what I think he deserves. Maybe that’s a weird thought if you think somebody deserves something, you’d like to see them get it.”
Mayfield, a two-time college walk-on at Texas A&M and Oklahoma, makes it no secret that he uses doubters, haters and snubs as fuel that drives him on the field.
“I don’t think Baker needs any motivation from any outside source,” Kitchens said. “That’s one of the good things about this combine, you try to find out what people are motivated by and you want the importance of football to be at the top of that and the importance for Baker of football in his life is very much up there.”
