Baker Mayfield says he cleared the air with Daniel Jones about ‘out of context’ quotes

Cleveland Browns quarterback Baker Mayfield told reporters Wednesday that he had reached out to Daniel Jones after comments Mayfield made about the New York Giants rookie quarterback were “taken out of context” the previous day.

An article published Tuesday by GQ describes Mayfield watching a “SportsCenter” segment on the Giants and commenting, “I cannot believe the Giants took Daniel Jones,” and adding, “Blows my mind.”

The article then relates a conversation with Mayfield about why scouts have such difficulty predicting who will be a successful NFL quarterback.

“Some people overthink it,” he said. “That’s where people go wrong. They forget you’ve gotta win.”

The former Heisman Trophy winner is also quoted as saying, apparently during the same conversation, “Either you have a history of winning and being that guy for your team or you don’t.”

All of that, presented together in the GQ article, led many people to believe that Mayfield was slamming Jones, something the Cleveland star denies.

After attempting to clarify his remarks Tuesday in the comments section of a Barstool Sports Instagram post, Mayfield gave it another shot Wednesday at practice.

“Just things taken out of context,” Mayfield told reporters of an interview he said took place in April. “That’s the problem with today’s day and age — you don’t read the whole thing, you don’t put two and two together, you just kind of read the scripts and people, you know, they combine sentences from different conversations. So it seemed very disrespectful and I can understand that. But what people didn’t realize is the conversation entailed of me saying that I was surprised that I was drafted No. 1 overall too, and then me going on a rant after that about QB evaluation and then me, frustration from the recruiting processes — it’s very well documented my thoughts on a lot of that.

“So it had nothing to do specifically about Daniel about the winning and stuff. I reached out to Daniel because all of that blew way out of hand and I wanted him to know how I felt. And I’ve heard nothing but great things from Saquon [Barkley] and Sterling Shepard, guys who have a lot of respect for him, and I respect their opinions. I just wanted to clear the air with him.”

Jones didn’t seem too bothered by the matter, telling reporters Tuesday he had “a lot to focus on here” with the Giants.

But Mayfield wanted to make sure Jones and everyone else understood his side of the story.

“To me, that came back on my character,” Mayfield said Wednesday. “That’s one thing that, I don’t care about a lot of opinions if you like me or not, but that looked like my character was way out of line, so that’s the only reason I addressed it.”