CLEVELAND — Cleveland Browns quarterback Baker Mayfield let his frustrations show a little bit when he stormed out of his Wednesday press conference inside the locker room at team headquarters in Berea and used several expletives to describe his feelings toward one of the beat reporters.
And while many took Mayfield to task for his conduct, within the locker room, he has the support of his teammates, one polarizing figure in particular: wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr.
“Nobody likes to feel like you’re being poked at or prodded at, especially not a guy like that,” Beckham Jr. said earlier this week. “I’ve been through that journey already, I’ve been through this fire, so that’s a part of me that’s also able to help him in a way.
“This is a kid who cares about football, cares about winning. Whatever people make him out to be just because of his personality -- if he was winning and he was still doing it, we’d all be here laughing and loving him. Because we’re losing, we want to kind of poke at him a little bit.
“I’m going to be the first one here to defend him every single time. I’ve always got his back.”
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Shortly after the locker room was closed off to the media, Mayfield issued a pair of tweets trying to clarify the incident.
“Everybody wants to hear the truth until they actually get it,” Mayfield wrote. “I am who I am and always have been. Don’t call it emotional when it’s convenient, and then, passion when it fits. I care about winning, so yeah, I’m frustrated.
“If I was to act like it’s okay to lose, then y’all would say that I’ve gotten complacent. My sense of urgency is at an all-time high, and if I offend anybody along the way…that’s too bad.”
Beckham Jr. understood that sentiment well, as he has felt mischaracterized and misrepresented in the media in previous years and quoted well-known recording artist Drake, who has a lyric that says, “in this game, you only lose when you fight back.”
“I sit up here and oftentimes answered questions with too much authenticity and it gets taken and used against me,” Beckham Jr. said. “I come up here and respect you. Not to say you don’t respect me, but I’m a human. Don’t play with me. I don’t like being played with. It’s a mutual respect thing.
“At times, that feels like it gets lost. We’re human. I don’t have time to deal with that. I’m good. I’m not going to put my energy in a place to where it puts me in a negative space. I’m going to keep my energy to me and keep moving.”
Rather than play the blame game for the Browns’ 2-5 start to the 2019 regular season, Beckham Jr. is focused on being a part of the solution, not the problem.
“Can’t sit back and be like, ‘It’s Baker’s fault,’” Beckham Jr. said. “I feel like that’s the easiest thing for us to do, and I’ve been in situations where one person is getting the blame and the rest of the people are quiet to kind of stay out of the fire.
“I’m going to jump in the fire with him. I’ll be the first one. Some of these losses are on me. I need to be in the right place at the right time. I need to do better, and that’s what I plan to do for the rest of the season.”