Baker Mayfield Fantasy Stud or Dud?

Dilly Dilly Cleveland Browns and welcome to The Bake Show as Baker Mayfield showed up at the end of the 2nd quarter and showed us all the potential and promise of his young career. Baker had himself a great game in the second half and the offense seemed to come to life with him behind center. He was firing bullets to multiple players and including guys like tight end David Njoku, who was practically dead for fantasy with Tyrod Taylor. How much fantasy value does Baker have going forward though, not that he is expected to be named the starter on Monday?

Here are Bakers comments about entering the game and giving the team a spark:

On the key to the spark he helped provide:
“Just being ready to go. I think being decisive on where I wanted to put the ball, just attacking. Like I said, you want to put them on your heels. When you do that, the offense builds confidence. The defense will see that. They start to build that, as well. The crowd gets into it when you get all three phases like that, it is pretty tough to stop.”

Baker Mayfield does two things that Tyrod struggled at. He is extremely accurate as we saw Thursday night against a good New York Jets defense, fitting the ball into tight spaces only his wide receivers could get to. Mayfield was the most accurate passer in college football last year with a completion percentage of 70.5%. Although Tyrod has been decent his most accurate season was in 2015 where he finished with a 63.7% completion. Mayfield has always been someone who has delivered the ball on time and expects his guys to be there while he will make some risky throws, and some will be picked he is a rookie. From what I saw Thursday night though he looks like he’ll be fine.

Baker and his comments about how he was throwing the ball:

On keys to his quick release:
“Seeing things, [releasing] quickly and just trusting your guys to be in the spots that they are supposed to be in.”

Baker also is not afraid to throw the deep ball, which we saw with Jarvis Landry long catch. While that was equally great throw by Baker and a great catch by Jarvis, Tyrod is known to hold the ball too long take sacks. Tyrod also struggles to throw the deep ball as we saw with the throw to Antonio Callaway where he waited too long once Callaway beat his man and under threw him. We likely won’t see that much from Baker.

So what does all of this mean for Baker Mayfield and his fantasy value? For me, it means he’s worth the add this week when your waivers run. The biggest issue here for Baker is that he’s at the most stacked position in fantasy football, but that doesn’t mean he can’t produce. He put 200 yards on Thursday and that was realistically in just a half of football. He will now be the guy going forward, he has a stacked offense around him. I expect with Baker’s talent he will be finishing in the top 15 almost every week. So pick him up off waivers and watch The Bake Show lead the Cleveland Browns and your fantasy team to new heights this year!

Couldn’t pass up the chance to post Baker’s quotes on finally bringing the Cleveland Browns their first win: 

On the Bud Light coolers opening and snapping a 19-game losing streak:
“Dilly Dilly! to the Cleveland fans (laughter). It is not the only win that we are going to celebrate. It is a building block for us. We did some good things, but there is still a lot that we can work on. That is the great part about it. We are nowhere near where we want to be. We are in a good spot to build a foundation and keep going.”

As always continue to follow Full Press Coverage for all of your Cleveland Browns news and hot takes. If you have any other fantasy or Cleveland Browns questions comment below or hit me up on twitter @SportsfanaticMB