MOBILE, Ala. — Did Freddie Kitchens watch Patrick Mahomes, Jared Goff, Drew Brees and Tom Brady in the championship games last weekend and envision Baker Mayfield there soon?

“I don’t want to ever put Baker into a box with somebody else because he’s an individual first and he’s his own player,’’ Kitchens said Wednesday at the Senior Bowl. “It’s our job, as coaches, to find his strengths and weaknesses. We try to build on the strengths and get those weaknesses better. You could ask him and he’d say the same thing.

“He’s nowhere near where he’s going to be and where we’d like to get him. There are a lot of things that go into that from a knowledge standpoint, from a personnel standpoint, from a defensive standpoint – there are all kinds of factors that factor into that. We will start chipping away when they get back. We will keep our head down and keep working and we will see where we are at in January.”

Hopefully, he said, they’ll be at FirstEnergy Stadium, for starters.

“Yeah, that’s the only goal,’’ he said. “The only goal is to play at home in January. I said that after the (introductory) press conference. We walked out into the bleachers and did an interview out there and I was like, ‘this is sad to see the stadium empty in January. We should have people working to get the stadium ready for Sunday.'"

With the Browns going 5-3 in the second half with Mayfield at the helm, he acknowledged that playoffs are the expectation for 2019.

“That’s always the expectation,’’ he said. “We really only have one goal. I do not want to belabor the point, but the goal is to win the Super Bowl.”

He believes the addition of offensive coordinator Todd Monken, who has a background in the Air Raid offense that Mayfield excelled in at Oklahoma, will be good for the second-year QB. Monken ran the No. 1 pass offense in the NFL last year in Tampa.

“Todd is very experienced,’’ Kitchens said. “I didn’t even know this when we hired Todd, but that Air Raid that people are talking about – I still have yet to know what that actually is – but I know this, that Todd has been successful everywhere he’s been. He’s been successful for some of the reasons that I feel like I’ve been successful. He buys into people. He buys into the player and that the game is about the player.’’

He said he’ll tailor the offense to the strengths of his players and not worry about what it’s called.

“When you call something an Air Raid – I know people tend to label things, like the West Coast offense – all of those things have evolved so much so I don’t really know what the base of everything is anymore,’’ he said. “We’ll call it whatever we want. What is that, the North Shore? We’ll call it something.

"We’re going to put them into the best position, whether it’s throwing the ball or running the ball. We still have Nick Chubb in the backfield, so I don’t know about all of those terms.”

He said he’s happy that Mayfield has had some fun lately, including appearing on CBS’s Late, Late Show with James Corden and a ‘Baking with Baker’ segment on the Fox pre-game show before the NFC Championship Game with Cooper Manning. Mayfield took a good-natured jab at Hue Jackson and also made a crack about his fine from the NFL for his sideline gesture.

“People do not realize that these players – Baker is 23, 24 years old – they still have a life,’’ Kitchens said. “I always talk about balance. You have to have balance inside of your life outside of football just like you do inside of football. That’s just part of living life. It is just that he happens to be Baker Mayfield doing it.”

He believes Mayfield will be able to handle all the fame and attention that will come his way this season. Next week, he’ll attend the Super Bowl festivities in Atlanta, where he could be named NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year.

“I know that Baker has an innate ability to know what’s important and what’s not,’’ Kitchens said. “He can separate that from real life, per se. At the end of the day, what he wants to be, really, is be a football player. Now, there are other aspects that cross over into that, and again, I think those are just the times that we live in. As long as it does not affect him personally or as a player for the Cleveland Browns, then what does it matter?”

He also has no issue with Mayfield mixing it up on social media with people like Fox Sports’ Colin Cowherd and others. He knows it’s part of Mayfield’s brand.

“I don’t have a problem with him doing that kind of stuff. That’s kind of the thing that kids have come up with," said the coach. "That’s part of their life now. All of that is neither here nor there.’’

Kitchens promised that it’s not all kidding around between him and Mayfield. Kitchens came down hard on him after he threw three interceptions in the loss to the Texans.

“Everything I’m about starts with trust and respect,’’ said Kitchens. “Once you have that established and they trust you, you can have tough conversations with them because those tough conversations are the ones that are going to get them better. ... It’s not always roses and daisies or whatever.

“Ultimately, if you can make them better as a player, you’ll have a good relationship with them. Baker, I kind of like the guy, too, you know? We have got a lot of good guys on our team, which is not always the case. We are spoiled from that standpoint, now we just have to get them better as players. They have to buy into that. They have and they will.”

Kitchens knows he and Mayfield will get teams’ best shots next season, and that they’ll face some better defenses than they did down the stretch.

“We kept hearing that about the defenses (we played), but we only play who is in front of us,’’ he said. “Going into the Baltimore game, they were the best in the NFL, or whatever that means. ... It doesn’t matter. You still have to play the game. I thought offensively we did a pretty good job against Baltimore (Mayfield threw for over 700 yards in splitting two games with the Ravens), but what I was talking about with Baker had nothing to do with that. It is him continuing to evolve as a player.’’

He said Mayfield displayed his high football acumen as a rookie.

“He’s a very intelligent guy,’’ said Kitchens. “He’s right where he needs to be. Now, he just has to play the game.

"He better not be thinking about anything right now because I told him to get away from football and just relax. It’s been a long year for him. It probably started after Georgia beat him in Pasadena (Rose Bowl). ... He started then preparing for the combine, then he is into minicamp and OTAs, then mandatory minicamp and he takes a little break. He is continuing to throw. He is getting ready for training camp, going through training camp, then the season and now we are here a year later.

"It is crucial that those guys decompress.”

Kitchens was hired as the Browns running backs coach just after the Senior Bowl last year. His first encounter with Mayfield was when the rookie came to the Browns facility for his pre-draft visit.

“You get a sense when you’re around him, there’s just something,’’ said Kitchens. “Bill Parcells taught me a long time ago, the best instinct that you have is what your gut is telling you about a person, yay or nay. Just go with your gut.

"He is definitely one of those guys that you would say, ‘Hey man, I want to be around that guy.’ All of the persona that they put off is from the standpoint of: How good do they want to be? He wants to be good.”