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OBJ-Baker Mayfield will be the best duo in the NFL – Max Kellerman | First Take

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Max Kellerman just handed the Cleveland Browns the loftiest praise in the NFL this offseason.

On a July edition of ESPN’s First Take, Kellerman told his co-hosts that Baker Mayfield and Odell Beckham Jr. are about to be the best quarterback-receiver tandem in football. It’s a bold call for a franchise that hasn’t won a playoff game since 1994, but Kellerman laid out exactly why he believes Cleveland’s roster overhaul changes the math for 2019.

• Kellerman predicts Mayfield and Beckham will form the NFL’s top duo for the 2019 season.
• He argues Beckham will “destroy” defenses in single coverage, a look Cleveland’s supporting cast should generate often.
• The pairing follows Mayfield’s rookie-record 27 touchdown passes in 2018 and Cleveland’s March 2019 trade for Beckham from the New York Giants.

The Case Kellerman Made on Air

Kellerman’s argument centers on defensive math. With Jarvis Landry already occupying one cornerback and Nick Chubb forcing safeties to respect the run, Kellerman contends opposing coordinators simply won’t have enough bodies to double Beckham the way they could when he lined up in New York without this level of surrounding talent. That, in his telling, is where the explosive plays come from.

Especially when he faces single coverage with the Cleveland Browns.

It’s a specific, football-literate argument rather than a hot-take toss-off. Kellerman isn’t just saying Beckham is talented — receivers get more explosive when defenses can’t afford to bracket them, and Cleveland’s skill-position depth is exactly the kind of supporting cast that creates those numbers advantages on the perimeter.

Mayfield Remains a Key Factor

Kellerman’s projection isn’t just about Beckham’s release-and-separate skills. He pointed to Mayfield’s rookie season — 27 touchdown passes, an NFL rookie record — as proof the Browns already had a quarterback capable of getting the ball to elite targets on time and accurately. Pairing that arm with a receiver of Beckham’s caliber, Kellerman argued, is what pushes the tandem past other star quarterback-receiver pairings around the league.

He also floated a secondary benefit: Beckham’s postseason and big-game experience from his Giants years could accelerate Mayfield’s own development, giving the young quarterback a target who already knows how to operate under playoff-level pressure even though Cleveland hasn’t been there in years.

The Backdrop: A Blockbuster March Trade

None of this discussion happens without Cleveland’s March 2019 trade for Beckham, which instantly reframed the Browns as an offense to fear rather than pity. Combined with Chubb’s emergence as a lead back and Landry already on the roster from the previous year’s trade, the Browns entered the summer with arguably the deepest collection of skill talent in the AFC — the exact scenario Kellerman says maximizes Beckham’s one-on-one advantages. It’s the kind of offseason buzz that fits right alongside the league’s biggest storylines, and it’s the reason Cleveland dominated NFL preseason conversation well before a single snap of the regular season.

The debate over Mayfield-to-Beckham arrived during the same stretch of the calendar when NFL talk usually simmers quietest, a summer lull that other networks fill with offseason speculation the way ESPN once filled airtime hyping Super Bowl weekend anticipation months in advance.

Kellerman’s take didn’t come with a hedge — he said best duo in the NFL, full stop, ahead of proven pairings elsewhere in the league. Whether it holds up rests on one simple football fact he kept repeating on set: how often defenses actually let Beckham see a single corner once the Browns kick off their 2019 season.