Baker Mayfield Stuns NFL Twitter with Game-Winning Drive as Rams Beat Raiders

Baker Mayfield joined the Los Angeles Rams on Tuesday. By Thursday, he was a hero.

Against all odds, Mayfield led the Rams on a 98-yard, game-winning touchdown drive—in a minute and 35 seconds with zero timeouts—to catapult them to a shocking 17-16 win over the Las Vegas Raiders.

Mayfield finished 22-of-35 for 230 yards and one touchdown with zero interceptions. He was sacked four times.

And NFL Twitter was beside itself:

Just think about how weird this was:

There aren't many times in professional sports when coaches, fans or pundits willingly settle on "well, they tried their best" as a satisfactory evaluation of a performance. These athletes are paid millions of dollars to win. Wherever you fall on the contrived "performance trophy" debate, they most certainly aren't handed out in the NFL.

But in this case, given the circumstances, "well, he tried his best" would have sufficed. Had the Rams lost, nobody would have blamed Mayfield.

Instead...heroics. Magical, hardly believable heroics.

Mayfield didn't just save the Rams; he saved the viewing experience for everyone else. This was not an aesthetically pleasing football game for 58 minutes. Mayfield's counterpart, Derek Carr (11-of-20 for 137 yards and zero touchdowns with two interceptions), didn't exactly raise the collective understanding of what peak quarterbacking could be.

But in those final two minutes, Mayfield provided us with a far more compelling story. It's been a struggle for him over the past two years, but he reminded us of the potential that made him the No. 1 overall pick in 2018.

It may be a blip in an otherwise disappointing season for Mayfield and his team for the past two days. But it certainly was a memorable one.