5 major letdowns from the Carolina Panthers 2022 season

Baker Mayfield – Former Carolina Panthers QB

Much was said about the ousted Cleveland Browns starter once the Carolina Panthers traded for him in the offseason, both good and bad. But the simple fact of the matter is that Baker Mayfield was not the guy for this team.

Mayfield has always been polarizing, there is no getting around that. However, the one thing the quarterback had going for him was a certain swagger and confidence that players and fans fed off.

A swagger that seemingly disappeared in Carolina.

Mayfield just wasn’t the same person after joining the Panthers and it showed both in the press conferences and especially on the field. That fire was just gone, and if anything the signal-caller had the opposite effect with lackluster performances and lack of any real motivation.

Winning only one game in a Panthers uniform, a game in which only 48 percent of passes were completed for a paltry 170 yards, is only one piece of evidence to this point. Carolina could not secure success with Mayfield at the helm – it’s as simple as that.

The team won in spite of the quarterback play. That this is never what you want.

I’m sure that no one in the front office expected to release Mayfield before the season ended and then watch him lead the Los Angeles Rams to a surprising victory. So whether it was the quarterback or the Panthers to blame, the long and short of it is that it didn’t work at all.

Mayfield was less than a shell of his former self in the black and blue. This is a deal that will go down as one of the worst in team history.