Getty Images
Quarterback Baker Mayfield said a lot during his long appearance on the YNK podcast, including that he felt disrespected by Brown.
But Mayfield also admitted that he plans to do some things differently when it comes to leading his next stop – wherever.
Towards the end of the 90-minute interview, Mayfield was asked if he was excited to have boys gather around him in a new locker room. The quarterback made it clear that his trial would not be an attempt to make the boys like him.
“I will not force him. I will be myself, “Mayfield said. “Because I have the feeling that I tried to impose it when things were not going well on the field, as in the last few years. I have the feeling that I will go in there and be myself, because this has worked for me in the past. I will enter with the same work ethic and mentality. And if they don’t like me, that’s fine. But when I step on the field and play as confident as I am and what I think I will do on the field the next time I have a chance to do it, I will earn the respect of the guys who did it, I don’t appreciate it from the beginning.
“And if I’m worried about making them like me, what do I do?” And they don’t care if I like them. They want their quarterback to win. They are trying to get a salary. If their team wins, they get paid. So guys who don’t like me personally, that’s fine. But I have to have their respect. And the way I do that is just to kick my ass, to be myself. Because you can be sniffed at the heartbeat if you are fake. They’ll smell it quickly. “
Mayfield was not asked about Chris Mortenson’s report from ESPN that the Browns wanted an “adult” in the quarterback – a comment that Brown’s owner Jimmy Haslam denied. But the quarterback admitted that he is working to improve the leading professional teammates in the locker room.
As Mayfield put it, one of the quarterback’s most important tasks is to get everyone to avoid complacency.
“It’s like, how can I get the most out of people who make a ton of money?” Mayfield said. “Because I could always motivate people when we weren’t making money. That was easy. I could get in their face, I could do all this because, you know what, we were in the same field.
“You get a pension after four years, you get benefits and all that. So how do you motivate people who are in this moment who have already reached it? This is the biggest battle for me right now. I can motivate myself. i know how to do it. I didn’t always do it right. But I know how to do it. How can I get it out of everyone else? Because it’s a leadership point of view to be a quarterback. I have to make everyone else around me better than they really think they are. ”
Mayfield added that a “bunch” of his energy is invested in his leadership, in part because he knows how he is perceived and portrayed through the media for his teammates and their families.
“When they get home at night, they’ll talk about how my quarterback works,” Mayfield said. “And it’s better for him to be a responsible person who actually cares for them as human beings – not just for victory. And how do you galvanize it? And that’s a huge problem. “
At this point, no one knows where Mayfield’s next destination will be or when it will get there. But for anyone who plays, they can get a quarterback with a renewed assessment of leadership and how important this is as the team’s QB1.
Add Comment