After months of hype and hope and anticipation, one awful start isn’t going to change the way the Browns think about Johnny Manziel.
They’d like to see some results sooner, rather than later, but still see bright potential in the first-rounder who flopped in his starting debut last week.
“I feel the same about Johnny as I always have,’' Browns offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan said, via Mary Kay Cabot of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. “Johnny is a playmaker. He’s done that throughout his career. Nobody can argue with that at all. There were a couple times in that game he did make some plays. We weren’t able to capitalize on it. . . .
“Johnny is going to have some growing pains. He’s played a type of football that he’s not going to be able to down in and down out in the NFL, but you still want him to do it at times. He did it at times. You know he’s going to have some bad plays from his lack of experience, and we hope to manage those and not put him in those situations as much.’'
It almost has to get better for Manziel, if only because it would be hard to be worse. He threw for 80 yards with two interceptions last week against the Bengals, and only ran 38 plays.
It was a disaster by any measure, but Shanahan thinks Manziel is resilient enough to withstand it.
“I think he is,’' said Shanahan. “Johnny is a real impressive guy. I don’t think everybody knows really what Johnny is about, and Johnny is very humble. Johnny is a real dude. He’s not going to sit there and BS me or anything. We all were embarrassed by that game.
“Anytime you don’t put up points – it’s not just Johnny – all of us are extremely embarrassed about that. We want to get back to Sunday, and Sunday couldn’t come quick enough. Monday and Tuesday were real rough. Felt a little better Wednesday getting out and practicing. Felt better today getting our practice in, and we just want to get out there again so we can get that bad taste out of our mouths.”
Of course, if he doesn’t play better the next two weeks, people will be wondering if the familiar taste of Cleveland will ever change.