Baker Mayfield In The Pro Bowl This Season? What Would It Mean?

It's absurd to suggest that 2020 is make or break for Baker Mayfield, but given the sheer amount of talent on the offensive side of the ball, even with the hurdles presented by COVID-19, it's not unreasonable to suggest that he should play well this year. Conor Orr wrote Mayfield could be one of ten players that could end up in their first Pro Bowl this year.

I think Mayfield is a perfect bounce back candidate who now operates behind a functional offense and offensive line. A few years from now, we will probably hear the full story of how disastrously disjointed Freddie Kitchens’s offense really was. Browns games were like watching a 7-on-7 team full of wildly talented individuals show up to a national tournament without a game plan. Odell Beckham was running and juking in space, Jarvis Landry was miles off the ball and poor Mayfield was trying to survive long enough to let the long routes develop. In comes Kevin Stefanski, a play action evangelist who can create a lot of diverse looks in more protected two-tight end sets. If nothing else, we may finally get the offensive version of the Browns in 2020 we were expecting in 2019.

Everything about this is perfectly reasonable and it doesn't even touch on the fact that both Odell Beckham and Jarvis Landry played hurt all last season, which is why they are recovering from offseason surgeries.

The problem may well be using the Pro Bowl as a standard for Mayfield, especially this year, assuming the NFL is able to have it at all. It's either going to be a team that is named and then does not play or it may set records for the amount of players who opt to skip it.

The fact it is scheduled to held in Las Vegas sounds good and could be an enticement for some players, but the reality of COVID-19 and the fact it could be viable will have players turning it down to avoid risk of infection. For those who want an unsupervised experience in Vegas, it also provides a valid excuse to keep the family from going to the Pro Bowl with them.

Beckham and Landry made the Pro Bowl last year. Landry had arguably the second best year of his career but Beckham, while he did eclipse 1,000 yards, was mediocre by his own standards. The problem was the AFC's selection of receivers was downright dreadful. The NFC could have filled out the receiver spots for both teams and not lost anything.

So Mayfield could make the Pro Bowl after seven guys drop out of the event, which wouldn't really mean much. The goal is for him to simply prove himself the way he did as a rookie and progress, firmly establishing himself as the franchise's quarterback. Earning his way in the way Nick Chubb did last year as the top vote getter and one of the best players at his position in the league would be pretty special, especially for a team that hasn't had a Pro Bowl quarterback since 2007 when both Derek Anderson representing the Browns and Vince Young represented the Tennessee Titans for the AFC after a number of players dropped out.

The way the Pro Bowl works tends to diminish the honor that it once was, but being a great player and being named to the team would mean the Browns were successful in 2020, which is ultimately what's important.