The Carolina Panthers and Baker Mayfield got a quickie divorce Monday.
The marriage lasted only five months, which was time for Mayfield and the Panthers to progress through an extremely brief honeymoon phase (training camp) to their first spat (a Week 1 loss) to more serious problems (Mayfield’s ankle injury) to irreconcilable differences (Mayfield’s 1-5 record as a Panther starter).
By Monday, interim head coach Steve Wilks had decided to demote Mayfield to third-team quarterback. When he heard that, Mayfield decided he’d like to be shown the door and be officially released. The Panthers obliged. Mayfield very possibly will end up as a backup quarterback on a team that has an injured QB or two (San Francisco? Baltimore?) and needs some insurance.
Carolina (4-8) moves on with Sam Darnold as its starter and PJ Walker as the No. 2 QB for the season’s final five games, including Sunday’s road game at Seattle. Mayfield moves on to an uncertain future after a very bad 2022. He asked for a trade once Cleveland recruited over him and brought in Deshaun Watson (out-bidding the Panthers for the tarnished former Clemson QB).
Then, when Mayfield got the trade he wanted to Carolina, he won the starting job, got everyone excited and then failed spectacularly as the starter, ranking near the NFL’s bottom in most every passing category (except getting passes deflected at the line — he was very good at that). Mayfield’s contract is about to run out, and he’s going to have to take a lot less money in 2023 and be a backup somewhere after what happened in Charlotte.
So what happened? How did it all go so wrong?
I’m still not sure, but Mayfield lost his mojo in a hurry when he didn’t have the fearsome rushing attack that was a big part of his one year of playoff success in Cleveland. And he didn’t get a lot of help from offensive coordinator Ben McAdoo, either.
Listen, Mayfield had me fooled, too. I wrote in July right after the Panthers made the trade that it struck me as both bold and desperate, and that the move could end up pushing the Panthers to the playoffs in 2022.
That wasn’t one of my finer takes. And there were others in that range. Robert Griffin III, the former Heisman Trophy winner turned football analyst, tweeted at the time: “Baker Mayfield and the Panthers are a match made in Heaven.”
Um, no. They weren’t.
Mayfield and the Panthers weren’t even together long enough to have a “We’ll always have Paris” sort of moment, unless you count his lone win in Week 2, or Mayfield happily head-butting his teammates without a helmet that one time.
“I wouldn’t say that he failed,” Wilks said of Mayfield on Monday. “I would say that it just didn’t work out.”
Oh, c’mon: Mayfield failed.
But I still don’t think it was a terrible shot for Carolina to take. Mayfield cost Carolina only a conditional fifth-round pick in 2024 and $4.858 million in 2022 salary-cap room, since Cleveland picked up $10.5 million of Mayfield’s original 2022 contract and Mayfield agreed to forfeit another $3.5 million to get the deal done.
Mayfield not working out was a big part of Matt Rhule losing his job, though. Rhule started Mayfield for all five of the games he coached in 2022, the team went 1-4 and then Rhule was gone (he’s now the head coach at Nebraska). Rhule never could solve his QB problem here, and Mayfield turned out to be the last QB he got to gamble on in Charlotte.
Wilks has never seemed as enamored with Mayfield as Rhule and general manager Scott Fitterer were, even though (or because?) Wilks was an assistant coach at Cleveland while Mayfield was the quarterback there. Mayfield sustained an ankle injury, which gave Wilks a chance to start Walker. Then Walker got hurt, and Darnold wasn’t quite ready to come back, and so Wilks gave Mayfield one more chance. But Carolina’s offense looked lost again in Mayfield’s final start, a 13-3 loss to Baltimore on Nov. 20.
So that was that for the No. 1 pick of the 2018 draft, and the Panthers and Mayfield signed the papers to no longer bind themselves to each other. It will all be over soon. We’re now in the “Let’s Say Nice Things About Each Other After We Split Up” part of the relationship.
“Baker has been nothing but a professional since he’s been here,” Wilks said. “A complete pro. Tremendous respect for him.”
Put Mayfield on the list of Panther quarterbacks who ultimately didn’t work out over the past five years, including Teddy Bridgewater, Kyle Allen, Cam Newton (2.0 version) and Darnold. There will be more to come in 2023: Matt Corral? A new No. 1 draft pick? Someone else?
Carolina’s still looking for a savior. And now, so is Mayfield.
