Baker Mayfield is firmly within the MVP conversation more than a third of the way through the 2025 NFL season, and that makes for one of the most remarkable turnarounds for a player in recent NFL history considering the former No. 1 overall pick was dispatched by two teams not that long ago .

While the story is spectacular, I believe there has been some misremembering of how we all got here. With the benefit of hindsight and excluding context, it is easy to say the Cleveland Browns should have never given up on Mayfield after four years. And it could be fair to jeer at the Carolina Panthers for not making it a year with Mayfield.

But the truth is the NFL collective, given multiple chances over the course of the early 2020s, could have had Mayfield under their employ fo

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