Taking the blame

Jeremy Mayfield is not the best Nextel Cup driver out there.

Sure, he has talent and has enjoyed some success in his career, but he'll readily admit he's not a Jeff Gordon or Tony Stewart – nor will he ever be.

What Mayfield is is always honest, up-front and willing to tell you the straight scoop. He acknowledges his faults and shortcomings, but at the same time he also does his best to be a company man, even when the company seems to have it in for him.

Such was the case for Mayfield this year at Evernham Motorsports. As bad as things were in terms of performance and results, Mayfield maintained a happy face and stayed loyal to his team, organization and boss, Ray Evernham.

Mayfield's repayment for such loyalty? He was fired.

Heading into 2005, DEI swapped Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s fifth-place finishing team from 2004 with Michael Waltrip's underperforming operation, and the move backfired terribly. But Evernham didn't learn from the DEI example and did exactly the same thing to Mayfield – and therein lies the real reason Mayfield's performance was so bad this season.

Mayfield and the No. 19 team made the Chase in each of their first two seasons, but Evernham took every crew member that had been with Mayfield the past two years – those Mayfield implicitly trusted and believed in – and shifted them to a new team with driver Scott Riggs.

That left Mayfield and new crew chief Chris Andrews with a group of role players who were relative strangers to each other. There were communication problems within the team and the crew members did not jell well, leading to Mayfield sitting a poor 34th in points this week.

"It's been a tough year just because I feel like I'm starting over," Mayfield said last month at Chicagoland, where the rift between he and Evernham came to light. "It's frustrating to explain what you need in a car and the guys aren't sure because they haven't worked with you before."

Evernham believed the team was putting in plenty of effort trying to right the ship.

"It's one of those where as hard as you try to turn things around if they're not working, sometimes you just have to make a change to get it to work and it's certainly not been because of a lack of effort," Evernham said.

Mayfield might dispute that.

The driver expressed at Chicagoland that Evernham had become, for all intents and purposes, an absentee owner. Mayfield specifically singled out the amount of time Evernham was spending focused on his Craftsman Truck Series effort with driver Erin Crocker.

"I don’t talk to Ray much," Mayfield said at the time. "We don't see Ray very much. He encourages us when he’s around, but we haven't seen him much lately. … I don’t know if he’s behind us or not."

The resulting fallout from that Friday morning interview prompted Evernham – who wasn't at Chicagoland at that time – to fly in and hold a hastily-arranged prerace press conference where he and Mayfield publicly made up.

One month later, despite Evernham saying Mayfield wasn't going anywhere, his driver was gone.

"Purely the performance of the car and the team is not where it should be to represent sponsors," Evernham told reporters last Friday. "[The No. 19 team is] out of the top 35 in points now and that was really the big trigger on making a change. We just haven't delivered as a group on what we should be doing, so we needed to make some changes."

And Mayfield became the fall guy, a great way to repay somebody who dutifully replaced Bill Elliott as the organization's No. 1 driver when Elliott slipped into semi-retirement after 2003, and who was Evernham's only entry in the Chase for the Nextel Cup each of the last two seasons.

Kasey Kahne jumped to the fore as the team's No. 1 driver this season and Riggs brought in some valuable sponsor dollars, relegating Mayfield to third-string status despite his success over the previous two seasons.

And Mayfield gladly let his teammates take the spotlight, because that's what a good team player does.

But instead of sticking with it and trying to rebuild for next year, much like Jeff Gordon and Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s respective teams and organizations did after bad seasons last year, Evernham instead chose to kick Mayfield to the curb.

It was the easiest thing to do, but it wasn't the most professional thing to do. If an owner can't give his driver the right equipment or even give him his time, then the driver is not the real problem.

And then, rather than publicly thanking Mayfield for the contributions he made to the team and wishing him well in his future endeavors, Evernham tersely said of Mayfield Friday at Watkins Glen, "He has been terminated, and I honestly don't want to discuss the terms with that."

Real classy, Ray.

One can't help feel for Mayfield, what with the ignominious treatment he has suffered this year. And it's not like his is the sole underperforming team in the organization, as the suddenly slumping Kahne currently is out of the Chase (he's 11th in the standings) with four races left to qualify and Riggs is back in 22nd.

Mayfield may be back on the track this Sunday in Michigan racing in another car for another team. Rumors have him replacing Elliott Sadler in the No. 38 Ford, although that hasn't happened as of this writing. Ironically, Sadler reportedly will be Mayfield's replacement in the No. 19 Dodge.

Whether it be Sunday, later this year or with a new full-time ride next year, Mayfield ultimately will be better off being somewhere where he's wanted, where he'll get loyalty back when he gives it.

"It's been the worst year I've ever had, I can tell you that" Mayfield said. "Ever since I've been racing this is the worst I've ever run in the Cup series. That ain't good."

Neither was the way he was treated by his now ex-boss.

That's what loyalty gets you.