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With Baker Mayfield playing the best ball of his career, Browns could be a force come playoff time

After tossing a gorgeous scoring strike to Rashard Higgins to put the Browns up 31-7, Baker Mayfield rushed to the back of the Tennessee end zone. There, he waited for Higgins to celebrate the touchdown by “walking the runway,” so he could mimic taking the photo at the end.

Cleveland’s brash quarterback officially has his swagger back. And with Mayfield playing the best ball of his NFL career, the Browns suddenly aren’t just a threat to merely snap the league’s longest postseason drought.

They’re a threat to do major damage in the postseason as well.

“We are definitely trending in the right direction,” Mayfield said Sunday after Cleveland’s 41-35 victory over the Titans, which included a startling 38-7 halftime lead. “I would be lying if I said otherwise.”

With four straight victories, the Browns most definitely are surging at the right time. No Cleveland player more so than Mayfield.

Since tossing an interception on the first drive in Week 7 against the Cincinnati Bengals, Mayfield has thrown 11 touchdowns without an interception. During that stretch, Mayfield ranks sixth in the NFL in QBR (72.3) and third in yards per passing attempt (8.58), trailing just Deshaun Watson and Patrick Mahomes, despite playing three of those games in inclement weather conditions that severely hampered the passing game on both sides.

Sunday, however, Mayfield delivered perhaps the finest performance of his pro career.

Capped by the 17-yard score to Higgins, Mayfield threw four touchdowns before halftime, the most by a Browns quarterback in a first half since Otto Graham in 1951.

Mayfield actually completed 13 of his first 15 passes, with one of the incompletions coming on a drop on the opening drive by Donovan Peoples-Jones that would've given Mayfield five touchdown throws in the half.

No other NFL quarterback has tossed four touchdowns in a half this season. Mayfield has now accomplished the feat twice, becoming the first Cleveland quarterback since Brian Sipe in 1983 with multiple four-touchdown passing games in a season.

“He's making plays left and right, in the pocket and out of the pocket,” said Browns coach Kevin Stefanski, who has proved to be the perfect playcalling partner for the third-year quarterback. “We had some unfortunate drops there in big moments [or] the numbers would be even better. He's playing at a high level.”

The Browns already boasted arguably the top ground game in the league, powered by the dynamic duo of Nick Chubb and Kareem Hunt operating behind perhaps the league’s most improved offensive line from last season.

Now they have a devastating passing attack to complement it, led by Mayfield's playmaking precision.

Mayfield's first three touchdown passes against Tennessee all came off play-action, and all three pass-catchers had at least 3 yards of separation, according to Next Gen Stats. But throughout the game, Mayfield was on the money, no matter the coverage. In fact, Mayfield had a 0% off-target percentage to go along with his season-high 334 passing yards. According to ESPN Stats & Information, that is the second-highest passing total with a 0% off-target percentage over the last five seasons.

“He was hot. He continued to stay hot,” said wide receiver Jarvis Landry. “That's a testament to a lot of hard work and to the things that he has been doing in his approach to make those throws and be as accurate as he was.”

This season started ominously for Mayfield. He threw an interception on the opening drive of the opening game, a 38-6 loss at Baltimore. He tossed a pick-six on the first series of a 38-7 defeat in Week 6 in Pittsburgh. The following week at Cincinnati, he failed to complete a single pass in the first quarter while throwing another opening-drive interception on the play on which wideout Odell Beckham Jr. suffered a season-ending knee injury.

But since then, Mayfield has bounced back in a big way. He answered with three go-ahead touchdowns in the fourth quarter to rally Cleveland past the Bengals. And now, he has quarterbacked the Browns (9-3) to the cusp of their first playoff appearance in 18 years.

“You don’t want to play the mental game too much when you're playing quarterback,” Mayfield said of the earlier struggles and subsequent criticism he faced. “Just realizing what I’m capable of. I’ve always believed in myself, and I’m not going to pay attention to B.S. Just put my head down and work. The job isn’t finished yet. Playing confident, being who I am and not looking for any approval on the outside is how I’ve always been the best at what I have done.”

Mayfield has found his best again, and has perhaps positioned the Browns to be a force come January.