Undeniably, it’s been a tough second week of October for Cleveland Browns’ quarterback Baker Mayfield. First, he got demolished by the San Francisco 49ers on Monday Night Football. During that contest, Nick Bosa did a flag-plant celebration after slamming Mayfield to the ground.
After ending up on the wrong end of social media highlight reels for that, Mayfield finished the game with a 13 quarterback rating. Equally important, if a quarterback spikes every pass into the ground; he finishes with a 39 rating. Therefore, Mayfield managed to do worse than that statistically.
Then, he was accused by 49ers cornerback Richard Sherman of not shaking his hand before the coin toss. However, Sherman says that he wants to apologize. To be clear, it seems like Sherman was fabricating that whole incident a bit.
Richard Sherman said he will apologize to Baker Mayfield for wrongly saying he had refused to shake his hand before the coin toss on MNF: https://t.co/BF3FT7y2WZ
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) October 9, 2019
Notably, Sherman is suddenly saying it’s his bad. Perhaps a handshake gesture took place after all?
“It’s definitely my bad. I never want anybody to have to deal with some stuff that they didn’t do. And so, you know, the questions that he’s gonna get and the annoying, nonsense questions about some stuff that happened in a game that’s already been done, you know, sure he’ll get an apology for that. I’ll probably reach out to him via text or social media to actually get a hold of him and talk to him … on the phone.”
Video obtained on twitter appears to show some type of handshake taking place. Remember kids, everything is caught on tape somewhere on the internet now.
So Richard Sherman claims Baker Mayfield refused to shake his hand at the coin toss. This video seems to indicate otherwise: pic.twitter.com/4CgOsLKLPL
— Jake Trotter (@Jake_Trotter) October 8, 2019
Sherman reiterated in the story written by Jake Trotter of ESPN that the whole incident was just his mistake.
“He definitely deserves an apology, and that’s my bad on that.”
While Mayfield has not done himself any favors to endear himself to opponents, Sherman should be more careful. Both of these players are viewed as big personalities – so it’s important that they portray the right image to the public. Otherwise, it leaves an even more negative impression of athletes in the NFL as a whole.
And it goes without saying – outside of Cleveland – Mayfield has a deep enough hole to dig out of as it stands.
