At least Sam Darnold knew this was coming. Maybe he didn’t know it would happen Thursday — heck, by rights, it wouldn’t have happened Thursday if Tyrod Taylor hadn’t gotten concussed — but he had to realize from the moment Baker Mayfield went No. 1 in the draft and he went No. 3 that they were going to be forever measured against each other. The Browns had a choice, after all, and didn’t choose him. That was the first sobering dash of cold water.
This was the other: a prime-time Thursday night, Mayfield coming off the bench and looking like he’s been in the NFL for 10 years, producing a field goal on his first drive, bringing the Browns back from 14 points down early and three points down late and looking so … polished. And poised. And comfortable. And confident. These were the same words Darnold himself had been showered with 11 days earlier.
Eleven days.
And suddenly he wasn’t the prettiest girl at the dance anymore, same as last April. Suddenly he was reminded who won the Heisman last year, and who wound up the jackpot prize in a loaded quarterback draft. And he had the best seat in the house for all of it.
“I have to be better,” he’d said just before midnight Thursday night.
He does. And he will. And if there was a silver lining to be taken from the Jets’ dreadful 21-17 loss to the Browns, maybe it was the reality that gravity had arrived for young Sam. The first game had been a rousing success. The second game had been a loss but he’d still slung it for over 300 yards.
This one was different. Darnold was saddled with an ultra-vanilla game plan (more a reflection of the coaches’ lack of confidence with the offensive line than the quarterback, probably) and two opportunities to engineer a last-ditch comeback that ended in bookend interceptions instead, a few missed reads, a few missed throws … with Mayfield making like Johnny U all the while.
“Baker is great,” Darnold said. “I knew that.”
Yes, he knew that, and so he saw this coming, and so he was far readier for this than the awkward awakening Peyton Manning received Sept. 30, 2001. It was still early enough in Manning’s career that he’d won a bunch of games but no meaningful ones yet, but the talent was so evident, so obvious, it was assumed he’d be the best quarterback of his generation, unchallenged, for years.
But a funny thing happened that day in Foxborough, Mass. Manning was awful — three interceptions, two of them pick-sixes — and the Colts were stomped by the 0-2 Patriots led by a second-year quarterback making his first career start. Tom Brady didn’t post eye-popping numbers. But he did walk off the field that day a 44-13 winner. And suddenly, Peyton’s Pathway wasn’t quite so clear. Soon enough, he had company on that generational throne. And was, by general consensus, passed by the kid making that first start.
Baker Mayfield was selected 198 picks higher in 2018 than Brady was in 2000. He was never going to sneak up on anyone, let alone Darnold, who up to the moment the Browns made the call was right there as the 1 or 1A choice of quarterback-starved teams. And look: Mayfield will not be excused his own learning curve either. It won’t always be as wonderful or as easy as it was Thursday for him. Soon enough he’ll receive the same reckoning Darnold will. After all, he also plays for a team nobody confuses for the ‘72 Dolphins.
But on this night, it was Darnold’s turn. On this night he was The Other Guy, absorbing hard hits and harsher lessons that will be a regular part of this advanced internship with the Jets. It is one thing to be told you’ll have rough spots to handle as a rookie — he’s been drilled about that by his coaches and the ever-helpful media. It’s one thing to be mature and precocious enough to recognize that on your own — as Darnold has from the start.
It’s another to walk off the field as Darnold did Thursday, and if he were a little older maybe there would have been an old song appropriately buzzing in his head (“Johnny come lately … There’s a new kid in town … Everybody loves him …) and as it was there was an ear-splitting roar instead, the chorus of a smitten fan base, and that, too, was a song he had already heard, the flip side of what he was feeling now.
“I thought that was one of his better games,” Jets coach Todd Bowles said, “from a mental standpoint and a gritty standpoint. He competed.”
He did. It wasn’t enough. He wasn’t the prettiest girl at the dance anymore but that doesn’t have to be anything more than one more lesson to throw on the pile. Next week, the Jaguars’ defense awaits with a fresh stack of their own. The internship marches merrily on.