Giants-Panthers gives a glimpse at uneasy life of NFL QBs
Panthers quarterback Baker Mayfield leaves the field after their loss to the Browns during an NFL game on Sunday in Charlotte, N.C. Credit: AP/Jacob Kupferman
Brian Daboll was the Bills’ new offensive coordinator in 2018. The team had a top 10 draft pick and was looking for a quarterback.
So, naturally, he took a close look at the reigning Heisman Trophy winner, Baker Mayfield of Oklahoma.
“I did a ton of work on Baker,” Daboll, now the Giants head coach, said before practice on Wednesday. “I’ve got a tremendous amount of respect for him. I spent a lot of time with him in the pre-draft process.
“He’s got a very live arm. He's a gamer . . . He's a good football player. He's been a winner. And I think he's doing a good job here with Carolina.”
That would be “Carolina” as in the Panthers, the team the Giants face in their home opener on Sunday, and Mayfield’s new team after the Browns moved on from him to (eventually) Deshaun Watson, trading him for a conditional mid-round draft pick in 2024.
All of which is a long way to get to today’s lesson in life and in football: Stuff happens, often even more to quarterbacks drafted early in the first round than to the rest of us.
The Browns selected Mayfield No. 1 overall, and he later led Cleveland to a playoff victory in 2020 while leveraging his personality into commercial endorsements.
The Jets took another quarterback, Sam Darnold, No. 3 overall. He spent three seasons in New York, got traded to Carolina, went 4-7 as a starter last season, lost a training camp competition to Mayfield and currently is on injured reserve with a high ankle sprain.
Daboll’s Bills took Allen No. 7 overall, and he now is one of the best quarterbacks alive.
(Josh Rosen, the No. 10 pick that year, is on the Browns’ practice squad. Lamar Jackson, No. 32, was the NFL MVP in 2019. Like I said: Stuff happens.)
On the other sideline Sunday will be the sixth pick in the 2019 draft, Daniel Jones, now the Giants’ starting quarterback.
Jones has had some huge ups and downs in his career, including on Sunday alone in a 21-20 upset of the Titans. But the Giants won, the first step on a long road to winning the trust of Daboll, GM Joe Schoen and Giants fans in the final year of his contract.
The fluidity of all this is nothing new, of course. It has been going on since quarterbacks were created.
Speaking of which, Jones’ backup is Tyrod Taylor, who was the Bills’ last starting quarterback before they drafted Allen, and who was the Browns’ first starting quarterback after they drafted Mayfield.
He has played for six NFL teams since being drafted in the sixth round in 2011.
“It’s definitely unpredictable,” Taylor told Newsday. “It’s part of the job. Just try to learn as much as you can from each situation, each experience, and become a better player from it.”
Taylor on Mayfield the 2018 rookie: “Competitive, commanding of the huddle, each day came in with the right attitude to work. Obviously, things did not work out for him in Cleveland. I think Carolina got a good quarterback and a good leader.”
Taylor on Jones the 2022 fourth-year man: “He’s doing a great job. He’s a heck of a leader. Comes in, works hard every day, wants to be perfect. Obviously, our reality is not perfection, but he's tried for it each and every day.”
Oh, by the way, the player drafted between Mayfield and Darnold in ‘18, at No. 2 overall, will be in the Giants’ backfield on Sunday after some much-discussed ups and downs of his own.
“I know them pretty well, two great competitors, two great talents and athletes,” said Saquon Barkley, the newly minted NFC Offensive Player of the Week. “That’s the nature of this league. But they’re guys who were able to get a second chance.
“You have to find a [positive] light everywhere. Some people aren’t in the NFL right now. Some people are at home on a couch waiting for a phone call. You have to put that in perspective.
“That’s kind of my mindset: Just be appreciative of every single day, come to work every single day with the energy that, ‘I’m living my dream I had as a little kid,’ and I’m pretty sure they’re doing the same.”
Neil Best first worked at Newsday in 1982, returned in 1985 after a detour to Alaska and has been here since, specializing in high schools, college basketball, the NFL and most recently sports media and business.
