Baker Mayfield explains whether he's looking forward to playing the Browns in Week 1

Baker Mayfield thrives when he plays with a chip on his shoulder. He proved that time and time again at Oklahoma, where he won the Heisman Trophy. Now, after being traded to the Carolina Panthers, Mayfield will have the opportunity to prove the Cleveland Browns wrong, as they moved on from him for Deshaun Watson.

He won’t have to wait long, either, as the Browns and Panthers play each other in Week 1 of the 2022 NFL season. However, Mayfield downplayed the matchup being a revenge game for him. Instead, he gave a very political answer.

“Obviously it’s going to be a special one…playing against the former team,” Baker Mayfield said in a press conference. “You know, (it’s a) similar situation to what I’ve gone through in the past with transferring from college to college. So, gotta handle it the best way possible. And, you know, my job is to put our team in the best position to win.”

Baker Mayfield would go on to say that while he was shocked by the situation in Cleveland, he isn’t living in the past. If he was, Mayfield feels that he wouldn’t be focused enough on helping Carolina in the present and future.

Of course, as Mayfield pointed out, he’s no stranger to changing teams. His college career famously walked on at Texas Tech, before transferring to Oklahoma. He left Texas Tech because he felt that coach Kliff Kingsbury took time away from him following an injury. By 2014, Patrick Mahomes was the quarterback at Texas Tech, while Mayfield was on to Oklahoma.

Undoubtedly, Baker Mayfield is aware of the media that will follow his Week 1 game against Cleveland. For now, it appears that he isn’t going to feed into the narrative. Instead, he wants to go out and do the best he possibly can for the Carolina Panthers, just like he did for the Cleveland Browns.