The Cleveland Browns, and their fans, are at home watching the NFL playoffs. On Saturday, two teams moved on to their conference championship games while two teams went home.
As always, the quarterbacks are going to be given the majority of the attention. With Aaron Rodgers and Joe Burrow considered to be top tier guys, one near the end of his career and one at the beginning, and Jimmy Garoppolo and Ryan Tannehill considered to be in the “good but not great” tier, many assumed that the first two would win Saturday.
Instead, Rodgers is going home with very little clarity about his future while Burrow moves on despite getting hit over and over again, not throwing a touchdown and having an interception. The Cincinnati young star did throw for 348 yards against a tough defense.
While Rodgers and Burrow will grab headlines Sunday and moving forward, it is the other two quarterbacks that may be of most interest for the Browns. Few, if any, believe Baker Mayfield can enter Rodgers’ realm of QB play or have a chance to catch Burrow in development. Instead, Mayfield’s best comparators from the game are Garoppolo and Tannehill.
In a win, Garoppolo threw for 131 yards and one interception.
In a loss, Tannehill threw for 220 yards, one touchdown and three interceptions.
Garoppolo was mostly kept from making mistakes with his yards per attempt down at 6.9 while Tannehill’s 9.2 yards per attempt was closer to Burrow’s (9.4).
Neither quarterback carried their team and both had mistakes that could have been costly. They were similar quarterbacks.
The difference is San Fransisco won and Tennessee lost. The Niners tried to make sure their quarterback didn’t cost them the game while the Titans tried to get their quarterback to win theirs.
Going into 2022, the Browns need to decide which philosophy they want to have with Mayfield. Do they want to play it safe as much as possible, as San Fransisco does with Garoppolo, or do they need Mayfield to be able to win games for them and unleash him more like Tennesee did with Tannehill?
Mayfield, Garoppolo and Tannehill could be the three-person Spider-man meme in real life. With subtle differences in play, the biggest difference is often how they are used. One of them had surgery, one is going home and the other has advanced to the NFC Championship game.