Baker Mayfield’s football life has been filled with revenge games.
He returned to Texas Tech in 2016 after transferring from Oklahoma and outdueled Patrick Mahomes in a 66-59 win. A year after Ohio State won in Norman, Mayfield planted an OU flag at midfield in Columbus after a win in 2017.
In 2018, Mayfield stared down the Bengals sideline after former Browns coach Hue Jackson joined the Cincinnati staff.
“When Baker is out there, swinging (his arms), with his chest out . . . that’s what we want to see — him talking his talk, and walking his walk,” Panthers receiver Rashard Higgins, who spent four years with Mayfield in Cleveland, said, via Steve Reed of the Associated Press. “When he’s jacked up, he plays good. So I want to see it from him.”
Mayfield is jacked up all right.
He has denied telling an NFL Media reporter that he was going to “f--- up” the Browns in the season opener. But his camp did begin selling T-shirts with Mayfield in a cowboy hat with the words “off the leash,” showing him breaking free of a chain on a dog collar.
Mayfield said the T-shirts had “subliminal messages” but added that he didn’t design them.
The fifth-year quarterback admits he is looking forward to “smack talking” with former teammates, but he didn’t give them any bulletin board material Wednesday.
“I’m grateful for my time in Cleveland,” Mayfield said. “I started my career there and it ended abruptly and unexpectedly, but we’re here now and everything happens for a reason. I’m rolling with the punches.”
There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that Mayfield wants to take it out on the Browns on Sunday, but it’s anyone’s guess as to what happens if he does.
