I don’t see Mayfield being successful as an NFL QB if he’s asked to essentially be a Kirk Cousins. And that’s kind of my fear going into next season. I feel like Stefanski should incorporate his zone run game, and play action off that is great, but if they’re going to ask Mayfield to check through progressions, I think it’s going to be painful again. He needs to know where he’s going with ball pre-snap and it’s on the playcaller/system to make those plays work.
I’m over simplifying this significantly, but one of the appealing points about Stefanski’s variation of the wide zone scheme is that it is QB friendly (in theory) and should actually help Mayfield a lot by giving him a lot more easy read/one read throws.
1. Stefanski called a huge amount of play action last year (5th most PA in the NFL) with Minnesota which statistically is proven to help the passing game even if a team isn’t effective running the ball. Mayfield, despite having a really tough year overall, I believe had the widest gap in the entire NFL among starting QBs in effectiveness with play action versus effectiveness without play action. He was solid statistically off play action and basically terrible without it.
2. More effective personnel groupings will help as well. Mayfield statistically was much more effective passing out of bigger personnel groups. Yet somehow Kitchens seemingly didn’t understand or was unwilling to adjust to this easily available information as the Browns passed out of 11 personnel
65% of the time. The Vikings leaned much more heavily on bigger formations and were one of the best passing out of said formations.
Passing Game
Browns in 11 personnel (65%): 73.2 QB rating, 7.0 YPA
Browns in 12 personnel (19%): 96.2 QB rating, 9.3 YPA
Browns in 21 personnel (6%): 87.1 QB rating, 6.4 YPA
Vikings in 11 personnel (18%): 79.9 QB rating, 7.2 YPA
Vikings in 12 personnel (46%): 101.3 QB rating, 7.4 YPA
Vikings in 21 personnel (23%): 112.3 QB rating, 8.8 YPA
Seems obvious, but coaches need to play to their player's (specifically their quarterback) strengths as much as they can. Stefanski did that last year in Minnesota. Kitchens did not do that at all in Cleveland.
3. The wide zone scheme often eliminates half the field right off the bat, which admittedly can be bad if the defense is really great (see Vikings-49ers playoff game), but is usually good against a non super elite defense. Again this is a big simplification, but if the Browns run play action off of a stretch play run look to the right, the entire left side of the field has essentially been eliminated from a progression standpoint unless they’re rolling back the opposite direction. But in either scenario, the moment Mayfield hits the play fake (assuming everything was blocked correctly) Mayfield will have an easy pitch and catch type throw to an open player at best or a 1 on 1 throw to a player capable of beating a defender at worst.
4. Not saying Mayfield and Cousins are anything alike mentality wise, because they aren’t really. But one of Cousins’ big criticisms is that he is actually very unwilling to stand in the pocket and go through progressions down the field. No QB likes to get sacked obviously, but Cousins more than any other quarterback in football has shown a desire to get the ball out of his hands quickly via dumping it off to his check down option. And this safe, risk free style has really worked for him! His completion percentage is routinely very high and his turnover rate is routinely very low. The problem is when defenses really key in on the wide zone stuff and the play action doesn’t work. Cousins doesn’t have the movement skills or the improvisation skills to make things happen when his initial read is taken away and teams key in on his check downs.
Optimistically speaking, I see Mayfield in 2020 hopefully being able to do a better and more souped up version of what Cousins and Garappolo did this year. Right off the bat Baker should be able to take advantage of all the “easier” throws that should be schemed open off the wide zone base.
Where it gets interesting and exciting is how many layers Stefanski and Van Pelt can bake in to the scheme in the form of moving pockets, rollouts and designed throws on the run on top of the play action stuff. Beyond that, we all know Mayfield can do some positive things from an improvised and scramble drill scenario (the problem was Baker tried to do way too much of this last year and ideally it should be a if all else fails play, not a main passing strategy) that other QBs can’t do.
TL/DR - I don’t expect Mayfield to be tasked with making tons and tons of progressions in the passing game. Cousins didn’t last year.