Is it fair to join a rival once you've gotten a pink slip? How about an inter-division rival you face two Sundays a year? That's the question facing former Browns head coach Hue Jackson, who joined the Cincinnati Bengals after getting canned by the Browns at the end of October. On Sunday, Hue's Bengals lost 35-20 against his old team. He even sarcastically got a football out of it from a former player. On Monday, the whole back and forth with his former quarterback, Baker Mayfield, went up a level when Mayfield took to Instagram to respond to condescending criticism from First Take's Damian Woody.
The criticism stemmed from Mayfield's comments after beating his former coach on Sunday. "I don’t know. Left Cleveland, goes down to Cincinnati, I don’t know," said Mayfield after the game. "It’s just somebody that was in our locker room, asking for us to play for him and then goes to a different team we play twice a year. Everybody can have their spin on it, but that’s how I feel."
Damian Woody was having none of that:
Woody said Baker needed to "grow up" when it came to his issues concerning Brown joining a division rival. He mentioned how football players are grown men and "things happen in pro football." He also brought up the fact that Mayfield transferred from Texas Tech to Oklahoma, both of whom play in the Big 12. It was a bit like being chewed out by your self-aggrandizing vice principal.
As expected, the No. 1 pick in the 2018 NFL Draft didn't agree, taking to the Instagram comments of Damian Woody's First Take video to air his grievances and call out Jackson once again.
"It's not even comparable," Mayfield wrote before an ellipsis. "I didn't lose 30+ games to be fake and then do that...I wasn't gonna have a scholarship. Good try though buddy."
The "buddy" moniker really is the zenith for IG comment monikers that double as an insult.
The Browns play the Bengals again in week 16, and we're guessing Browns fans will feel the same way their QB does.
