One of the leading candidates for MVP this year has played for four teams, eight head coaches and eight offensive coordinators across eight seasons in the NFL.
Baker Mayfield, in his third season with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, has made a career of persevering.
“You’ve got to be wired the right way to overcome it all,” Saints defensive coordinator Brandon Staley said.
If two years ago was The Year of the Backup Quarterback, this NFL season has been defined by The Second Chance Quarterback. Or in some cases, third and fourth chances.
It’s not just Mayfield. Daniel Jones has revived his career with the Indianapolis Colts. Sam Darnold is thriving with the Seattle Seahawks, a year after the former 2018 first-rounder finally broke out with the Minnesota Vikings. Mac Jones, labeled as a bust, has kept the 49ers afloat with starter Brock Purdy sidelined.
Their seasons can be seen as a lesson in patience. Darnold, like Mayfield, is in Year 8. Daniels Jones is in Year 7. Mac Jones is in his fifth season but is already on his third team. Their play serves as a reminder that it can take a lot of time for quarterbacks — or any player — to develop fully.
That lesson is particularly relevant to the New Orleans Saints this week as they prepare for Sunday’s game against Mayfield and the Bucs.
After quarterback Spencer Rattler’s worst game of the year — a four-turnover, four-sack debacle against the Chicago Bears — coach Kellen Moore was repeatedly asked about the possibility of the team turning to second-round rookie Tyler Shough. Moore said the Saints were sticking with Rattler.
But the fact that the topic was even a conversation at all highlights how difficult it can be to stay the course with a young quarterback, especially with another one waiting in the wings.
Preaching patience is easier said than done.
“This quarterback position, sometimes it takes time,” Moore said. “They’re going to go through (adversity). This is an awesome opportunity for Spence. You deal with an adversity game and you get to respond. All these guys have gone through this. You continue to develop these guys, and they’ll continue to grow.”
Last year, Vikings coach Kevin O’Connell created a stir when he said he believed that “organizations fail young quarterbacks before young quarterbacks fail organizations.” That sentiment seemed to resonate for many folks around the league. Mayfield and Darnold, after all, were teammates for the Carolina Panthers in 2022 and neither succeeded. The Patriots hired a former defensive coordinator to help run the offense in Mac Jones’ second season.
But eventually, organizations have to act if the results aren’t changing. Sure, it’s easy in hindsight to criticize the Cleveland Browns for trading Mayfield, but they had only one playoff appearance in his first four seasons — and they moved on to acquire Deshaun Watson, then viewed as one of the best quarterbacks in the league. The Giants spent six years with Daniel Jones and only made the playoffs once. Aren’t the results supposed to matter?
With Rattler, the Saints could — and likely would — argue that there hasn’t been enough of a sample size to determine his potential. Though he’s 1-12 as a starter, the 25-year-old has not started a full season’s worth of games. And the improvement that he’s made from Year 1 to Year 2 has been an encouraging enough sign that he deserves a runway to see how much more he can grow.
“Deserve” can be a funny word in NFL circles, though.
It’s probably not a coincidence that the four second-chance quarterbacks thriving this year are all former first-rounders. There will be executives who always are willing to take a flyer on highly regarded prospects because of the traits that separated them in the draft process. Rattler, a fifth-round pick, might not have that luxury, even with what he’s put on tape.
Take a look at Sam Howell. A fifth-round prospect drafted two years before Rattler, the former North Carolina quarterback started all 17 games in 2023 and led the Washington Commanders to a 4-13 record. Despite some positives from that season, the Commanders replaced him with Jayden Daniels, and Howell has since been traded three times to be a backup elsewhere. No one outside the Howell household is clamoring for the quarterback to start any time soon.
But writing a player off comes with risk. That applies to any position, not just quarterback.
“You know how many times I didn’t get re-signed?” Saints linebacker Demario Davis said. “You know how many times I got traded? Maybe if they’d have waited a little a longer, they’d have saw a little bit more.”
Before joining New Orleans in 2018, Davis had two separate stints with the New York Jets sandwiched between a one-year stay with the Cleveland Browns that saw him then traded back to New York. He struggled in those stops but eventually blossomed into an All-Pro with the Saints.
Davis said when he thinks back to being a younger player, he wishes people had been more patient.
“You never know how it’s going to bloom or blossom,” he said.
He added that it’s hard to tell what a player can become until his fifth year.
“You don’t make it to this level and not be able to play,” Davis said. “It’s in there. Why doesn’t it come out? Why doesn’t everyone seem to maximize their potential? (There) can be a lot of different situations. It could have to do with them. It could have to do with not finding the right fit.
“But what you hope for everyone is that it eventually clicks.”
It did for Davis and Mayfield. The answer’s not yet known with Rattler.
