It was Mae West who said, “All discarded lovers should be given a second chance — but with somebody else.”
Which brings us to the crazy big football game in downtown Detroit this afternoon. It is a divisional playoff game, yes, the likes of which have not been seen in Detroit in 32 years. It is a contest to determine who advances to the NFC championship, something Lions fans dared not even dream about until a few weeks ago.
But it is also something else. Call it The Discard Bowl. Two quarterbacks, both No. 1 draft picks, who were told by their original teams, “The experiment has failed. We’re moving on.”
Jared Goff and Baker Mayfield are all kinds of talented, but they are also, indelibly, retreads, enjoying stunning new success with different franchises that echoes Frank Sinatra crooning about love being better “the second time around.”
To see how rare this is at playoff time, consider the other teams playing this weekend. Kansas City is riding its first-round draft pick superstar Patrick Mahomes, while Buffalo banks its future on its first-round star selection Josh Allen. Saturday’s games saw Lamar Jackson, Baltimore’s first-round pick, opposite C.J. Stroud, Houston’s stunning rookie. Jordan Love, whom the Packers selected when Aaron Rodgers was still going strong, faced off Saturday night against Brock Purdy, whom the 49ers took when no else in the league wanted him.
In all six cases, the starting quarterbacks have only played for the team that drafted them and continue to show them love.
And then there’s today, where Goff and Mayfield, neither one yet 30 years old, already have labored on six teams between them.
Discarded. Undeterred.
Wait, the guy from the commercials?
Of course, most of that is Mayfield. The former Oklahoma star won the Heisman Trophy in 2017 after a college career that once saw him pass for over 500 yards and seven touchdowns in a single game, a wild showdown with Mahomes, then with Texas Tech.
Cleveland made Mayfield the No. 1 pick in the draft. But despite taking them to the playoffs, the Browns soured on the brash kid after four years of a rocky relationship (a shoulder injury, media brushups, etc.) and dealt him to Carolina for a fifth-round draft choice.
That was only the start of his descent. With the Panthers, Mayfield fell so far — in less than six months — that at one point he was lining up on the scout team as a defender. You saw more of the guy in TV commercials than you did on a football field.
He asked to be released and was. The top pick in the entire NFL draft was let go for nothing.
You don’t get much lower than that.
But Mayfield has clawed his way back after signing as a free agent, first with the Rams where, despite a 1-3 record, he rediscovered some of his swagger, and now with the Bucs, who desperately needed an inexpensive starting quarterback after Tom Brady’s departure and an Atlas-like burden of money against the salary cap.
Mayfield, playing on a one-year, $4 million deal, has sparked the Bucs to wins in six of their last seven games, including a 337-yard, three touchdown performance on Monday in the wild card playoff win over the Eagles.
“It’s always fun to be counted out,” Mayfield told the media this week. “Obviously, I’m pretty comfortable in it.”
Discarded. Defiant.
Don’t get mad, get better
That’s not exactly Goff’s approach. Born and raised in California, there was a certain shell-shock to the idea that the Rams had given up on him and shipped him to the Midwest. You saw it that first year in Detroit, when the Lions went 3-13-1, while the Rams won a Super Bowl. And you can still sense it in Goff’s bristling posture whenever the subject of the trade comes up.
Goff doesn’t like talking about the past, and keeps his sentences short. (When asked if there was extra motivation before playing L.A. last week, he answered, “No, no, yeah, I think — no. I mean, obviously there’s a personal connection there and there — not just for me, but for a lot of our players and some of theirs as well.”)
Deflection is understandable. Goff believes in himself. But when you are confident and your employer is not, it can make you many things. Confused. Resentful. Vengeful.
Still, you could make the case that being discarded was the best thing to happen for Goff’s growth as a quarterback. He has worked harder, gotten better, become more consistent and less rattled, to the point where even his coach Dan Campbell, who could stare down a charging bull, admires his unflappability.
“He’s at his best when his back’s against the wall,’’ Campbell said last week at his news conference, “… and man, when things don’t look good and we’re not moving the ball or you have a couple of turnovers and you feel like the world’s kind of coming in on you, man, he’s really at his best.
“He comes out of that because … he can take the coaching and he can look at himself and say, ‘Well, yeah, that’s because of my footwork. … It’s simply that.’ It’s not anything else.
“It’s not, ‘Oh, well, he just can’t play anymore. He’s lost his mojo.’ No, it’s, ‘It’s my right foot. It’s where I start with my eyes.’ And I think that’s crucial … he’s very process-oriented and that’s what pros do. That’s how pros get better. That’s how they play consistently in this league.”
Or as Goff’s former Rams teammate and offensive lineman Andrew Whitworth told Sports Illustrated last week, “Jared’s personality is like a punching bag. You hit him, he pops back up.”
Discarded. Undaunted.
Only one man’s story ends here
No matter who wins today, there will be an element of redemption in the celebration, not just for the quarterbacks, but for the entire roster. Obviously, Detroit would be over the moon to make the NFC championship game, as far as the franchise has gone since the 1991 season. But leave it to the Lions to be playing a team that would be even more of a shock to reach that game than they would.
“It’s been great, obviously, our backs against the wall,” Mayfield told the media this week in Tampa. “The run we had to get on, it makes it even more enjoyable. …
“We’re happy but were not satisfied. We’ve got bigger goals.”
You could literally lift that sentence and pop it into Jared Goff’s voice box. The Lions may have leaped a huge hurdle in finally winning a home playoff game last Sunday. But they didn’t come this far to only come this far.
“This is the best,” Goff said last week. “This is what you do it for, is times like these.”
He later added, when asked about the distraction of the Rams/Matthew Stafford storyline this week, “It’s nice to not have to deal with those questions from you guys, as meaningless as they were, and to be able to have more meaningful questions, for sure.”
That’s spin, of course. Because Goff knows the questions this week and last week are basically the same, and what Mae West alluded to in her famous quote:
Can you prove the old lovers wrong and find better happiness with someone new?
The “yes” lies buried inside a victory this afternoon. And between Mayfield and Goff, one way or another, a quarterback who at least one team gave up on — and possibly three — is going to be a win away from the Super Bowl.
Discarded. Destined for something bigger. Anyone who has ever been jilted, dumped, or left at the altar can relate to how good one man will feel this evening.
Contact Mitch Albom: malbom@freepress.com. Check out the latest updates with his charities, books and events at MitchAlbom.com. Follow him @mitchalbom.
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