NFL Draft 2018: Comparing Josh Rosen to Baker Mayfield
By Keith Rivas
Baker Mayfield takes better care of the football
This is an all-encompassing compliment to Mayfield’s play in his final season at Oklahoma. If you compare him head to head with Josh Rosen, he’s better statistically completion percentage, yards per attempt, overall yards, and touchdowns thrown.
While those are great stats to know about his game, the thing that stands out above all else is the fact that he only threw five interceptions over the course of the seasons. That’s half as many as Rosen threw at UCLA, and you could argue pretty easily that Mayfield had the harder competition to play against.
Rosen’s biggest challenges in terms of ranked competition came against the then-No. 12 Washington Huskies and then-No. 11 USC Trojans. Meanwhile, Mayfield had to play the second ranked Ohio State Buckeyes in Week 2 and was able to only build from there after stunning them at that point in the year.
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Add to Mayfield’s credit the fact that he also had to play TCU twice, first when they were ranked sixth overall and then in the regular season finale in which the Horned Frogs were ranked 11th. Mayfield also seems to do well when it’s a high scoring game, with the exception of the season-ending loss to Georgia in overtime that nearly had both teams in the 50’s.
That can be found in his road win against then-11th ranked Oklahoma State in which he helped the Sooners win a wild one by a final of 62-52.
Lastly, he won the Heisman Trophy for a reason. He completed 71% of his passes, threw for north of 4,000 yards, tossed 41 touchdowns, and averaged nearly 12 yards per pass attempt. Those numbers will make teams in the top five want to watch highlights, while also keeping an eye out for flaws in his game that might not be worth the risk.