BEREA, Ohio (AP) — Baker Mayfield did some damage control after taking a surprising shot at a fellow NFL quarterback.
Claiming he was taken out of context, Mayfield said Wednesday that he reached out New York Giants rookie QB Daniel Jones after making some biting comments about the first-round draft pick in an interview.
Mayfield acknowledged he told GQ that he was surprised New York selected Jones — “blows my mind” he told the magazine in April — but that he didn’t mean any disrespect toward Jones and that some of his comments were pieced together.
Mayfield said he sent text messages to Jones on Tuesday to make sure he understood he didn’t mean any harm.
“I reached out to Daniel because all that stuff was blown 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 that have a lot of respect for him and respect their opinions,” Mayfield said. “I just wanted to clear the air with him ...”
Mayfield said Jones appreciated the gesture.
“He was very nice,” Mayfield said as the Browns wrapped up training camp. “Everything that people have said about him, he was cordial. He said, ‘no worries, man.’”
Cleveland’s brash second-year QB said he was bothered most that the comments distorted his character.
“In today’s day and age, you can read one thing and you can have your feelings,” he said. “That’s the reason I addressed it (Tuesday). To me, that came back on my character. 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, and so, that’s the only reason I addressed it.”
Mayfield said he didn’t feel blindsided by the story, but was “pretty confused about it” because he didn’t recall much of what he said four months ago.
“Once it came out, I was like, ‘Wow, I completely forgot that we even had that conversation back in April,’” he said. “I was pretty confused about it, to be honest with you because that wasn’t what the conversation was.”
