Baker Mayfield in a Baltimore Ravens uniform was a real enough possibility in 2023 that it had Browns fans staring at the wrong kind of nightmare.
Todd Monken, who was the offensive coordinator in Baltimore at the time and is now the Browns head coach, recently said the Ravens believed Mayfield was headed their way before he wound up signing a one-year prove-it deal with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers instead.
During his weekly press conference, Monken laid it out plainly:
"It was only four years ago when I was in Baltimore, we thought he was coming there to be our backup," Monken said. "And the Bucs signed him, and the good Lord put that in place for him, and he has taken advantage of that. We thought after Carolina and the Rams, he was going to come to Baltimore, and I was fired up about it."
For Cleveland fans, that’s a tough image to shake. Mayfield wasn’t just any quarterback. The Browns took him No. 1 overall in 2018, and for a while he looked like the answer to a search that had dragged on for years.
That hope carried extra weight because of what Browns fans had already lived through. In 1996, Art Modell moved the franchise from Cleveland to Baltimore, where it became the Ravens. The bad blood between the cities and teams has never really gone away.
Mayfield gave the Browns a jolt of relevance and hope, but the relationship unraveled during the 2021 season. He was injured early, tried to play through it, and the situation turned messy.
Fans wanted him to sit and recover. The coaching staff didn’t force him out, and the tension spilled over on and off the field.
Once that season ended, Mayfield publicly pushed for a trade and got it. Cleveland sent him to the Carolina Panthers in the 2022 offseason. Carolina cut him in December, and the Los Angeles Rams brought him in late that season as an emergency replacement for the injured Matthew Stafford.
From there, Mayfield found a new home in Tampa Bay. He signed with the Buccaneers, became their starting quarterback, and is now heading into his fourth season there after agreeing to a three-year, $165 million extension.
Since leaving Cleveland, Mayfield has kept talking about football - and about his Browns days - and not all of it has been flattering. That’s part of why the idea of him ending up in Baltimore hits so hard. Playing for the Ravens would have added another layer to an already bitter split.
As it is, his move to Tampa Bay has softened the edge for Browns fans a bit. Cleveland and Tampa Bay haven’t played since Mayfield left, so the emotional damage has been limited. If he had landed in Baltimore, it would have felt like a much sharper jab.
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