MAYFIELD MIGHT HAVE JUST SAVED HIS CAREER
Heroic last-minute drive for Rams was incredible sight to see
Let's start with this. What Baker Mayfield somehow accomplished Thursday night — quarterbacking a Los Angeles Rams team he'd joined only two days earlier to victory over the Las Vegas Raiders with outsized, late-game, dramatic, historic heroism — was not “unbelievable.”
Because if anything happened, it is, by definition, believable. “Unbelievable” is the most overused and inappropriate superlative in sportdom.
But fantastic? Jaw-dropping? Dream-worthy? Unprecedented? In-frickin'-credible?
Oh yeah. All those things and more.
That any pro quarterback discarded by his team on a Monday afternoon could be claimed on a Tuesday afternoon, fly cross-country, get only 20 practice throws in on a Wednesday afternoon, all told have only 48 hours to digest his new team's complex offensive schemes and plays and attendant critical, dense terminology, then on a Thursday night not only attempt all of his new team's throws in a prime-time showcase game, and not only not embarrass himself or his club in the process, but expertly engineer two long, late touchdown drives with crisp throw after crisp throw, and wise decision after wise decision — the last drive covering 98 yards in eight plays that used up all but 10 seconds of the remaining 1:45 — to breathtakingly snatch a 17-16 victory from seeming certain defeat, and end a sixgame L.A. losing streak, would, well, seem as miraculous as this sentence is long.
Indeed, “unbelievable.”
But it happened. And Baker Mayfield made it happen.
That Mayfield is the quarterback here only adds to this spectacle.
This past winter the Browns let Mayfield dangle for three months, as to whether the club really wanted him back in 2022. He and the rest of the world simultaneously learned it, in fact, in undenied news leaks announcing the Browns were hard pursuing a trade for Houston's shameaverse, serial massage arranger Deshaun Watson.
It took the Browns four months to find a club willing to part with a lowly Day 3 draft pick for the shamed Mayfield — the lowly Carolina Panthers.
If any team in the league needed an upgrade at QB it was the Panthers. Yet after Mayfield quickly shot up to starter early in August training camp, he performed no better than the team's other QB discards, Sam Darnold and PJ Walker.
After suffering a leg injury in October, Mayfield got only one other start with the Panthers, a 13-3 loss at Baltimore three weeks ago in which Mayfield completed only 55 per cent for 196 yards and two interceptions. Bad stuff.
On Monday, Mayfield hit rock bottom, when he apparently learned just before the rest of us did that interim Panthers head coach Steve Wilks had decided to relegate him to third string, behind Darnold and Walker — meaning he wouldn't even dress for games. Mayfield requested he be waived, in the hope other clubs would fight for his services via the waiver wire on Tuesday.
The Panthers obliged him. But only one team put in a claim, the Rams, whose playoff hopes are practically kaput, whose star starting passer Matthew Stafford is done for the season with a spinal-cord bruise, and whose top backup, John Wolford, has been battling a limiting neck injury for weeks.
Reports Wednesday and Thursday said Mayfield had digested enough of the Rams' offence to maybe even play a bit against the Raiders.
As it happened, Wolford started but didn't throw a pass in L.A.'S opening three-and-out.
When Mayfield replaced him on the next possession, with
2:22 left in the opening quarter, the Raiders already led 10-0. On Mayfield's first snap he dropped back and hit top available Rams wideout Van Jefferson for 21 yards. That and a Mayfield scramble for six yards set up a Matt Gay 55-year-old field goal. Mayfield in for good. Game on. When Vegas went up 16-3 with 12:20 left, probably millions of TVS in North America either changed channels or were turned off for the night. Mayfield, though, was just firing up.
On a 17-play, 75-yard TD drive that ate up 9:01 of the fourth quarter, Mayfield hit on 10-of-13 short passes for 61 yards.
After a meek Las Vegas threeand-out and trailing 16-10, Mayfield and the Rams got the ball on their own two-yard line with 1:45 left and no timeouts.
All Mayfield needed to do was march the team 98 yards and score a touchdown to win it. That's all.
After a Mayfield interception was nullified by a defensive pass-interference penalty and after a sack of Mayfield similarly was negated by a Las Vegas penalty (unsportsmanlike conduct), the Rams got the ball at their 28 with 1:20 left. In a flash, seemingly, they scored the winning TD:
■ Mayfield dropped a dime, deep right, into the hands of streaking receiver Ben Skowronek, between two clawing defenders, for a 32-yard gain to the Las Vegas 40, clock ticking.
■ No huddle, hurry-up, 56 seconds left. Mayfield hit running back Malcolm Brown in bounds for nine, clock ticking.
■ No huddle, hurry-up, 33 seconds left. Mayfield hit Skowronek in bounds for eight, to the Vegas 23, clock ticking.
■ Hurry-up, spike, 16 seconds left, clock stopped.
■ After huddling, Mayfield then perfectly hit sprinting Jefferson in the end zone, against man coverage down the left side, for one of the holy-fire-truck-ingest of all last-moment winning touchdowns ever.
It had been 45 years since an NFL team marched as many as 98 yards for a go-ahead score in the last two minutes.
Unbelievable? No. Because it happened.
Can you believe it?