Ian Rapoport names Panthers as Baker Mayfield’s ‘most likely spot’

Baker Mayfield said he believed the Seahawks were his likeliest destination, but an NFL insider has other thoughts.

Appearing on “The Pat McAfee Show,” NFL Media’s Ian Rapoport talked about why the Seahawks seemed to be an unlikely destination for the Browns quarterback — despite what Mayfield said on a podcast earlier this week.

“He identified the Seahawks as his likely team,” Rapoport said. “That was a little surprising to me because I haven’t gotten the sense at all that the Seahawks are that interested. At the salary, they’re not that interested. They’ve added Drew Lock, they’ve added [re-signed] Geno Smith, they may take a quarterback in the draft because I know they’ve done a lot of homework. I think they had Desmond Ridder in on Wednesday.”

Then, Rapoport named a different NFC team he thought would be a better fit for Mayfield.

“To me, the Carolina Panthers seem to be the most likely spot for Baker Mayfield, or maybe a team brings him in as a high-money backup, like the Tampa Bay Buccaneers — that would make some sense to me.”

It would be highly surprising if the Buccaneers added Mayfield. Right now, Tampa has negative cap space, according to Spotrac, and Mayfield is due about $19 million next season.

The Panthers, however, make a lot of sense from the outside. Prior to suffering a season-ending shoulder injury, Sam Darnold did not reinvigorate his career in Carolina as the franchise would have hoped. The Panthers went 4-7 in his starts last year.

Further, the Panthers do have some cap space to accommodate Mayfield.

Earlier this week, the 27-year-old expressed that he felt “disrespected” by the Browns, not necessarily for replacing him with Deshaun Watson — which is part of the business — but for not being transparent with him in their communications.

Unlike Darnold, Mayfield has led a team to the playoffs in his NFL career, so one would see why the Panthers might consider him an upgrade at the quarterback position.