As the saying goes, success has a thousand fathers, but failure is an orphan. As to Browns quarterback Johnny Manziel, the biggest culprit is Manziel himself. Along with the homeless guy who told Browns owner Jimmy Haslam to draft Manziel.
Emily Kaplan of TheMMQB.com chronicles the fall of the man known as Johnny Football, with plenty of snippets regarding the things that went wrong in Cleveland.
For starters, a close friend of Manziel’s said that Manziel “never really felt like the coaches wanted him there.” A source with knowledge of the situation tells PFT that Manziel and other players indeed sensed that the coaches didn’t want Manziel.
Players felt differently, according to Kaplan. “His teammates all love him, and stand up for him,” an unnamed player told her.
Another source tells PFT that the love for Manziel wasn’t universal among players. However, the sense that the coaches didn’t want Manziel added to the decision of a large number of players to embrace and support Manziel, in part because of the perception that he was being punished for his partying.
The perception that the coaches didn’t want Manziel may have come from the reality that he wasn’t suited to being an NFL quarterback. A former Browns coach tells Kaplan that, once Manziel became the starter, “he had no idea what was going on. He went out there and had no clue.”
As a rookie working with joystick-twisting offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan, the offense was stripped down for Manziel to something so simple that “you or I could have lined up under center,” the unnamed coach said.
When the situation dragged on in 2015, some teammates began to cool on Manziel, a source told PFT. His declaration on a cool Cleveland afternoon, as reported by Kaplan, that “I bet it’s nice in Dallas right now” rubbed some teammates and others in the building the wrong way.
At times in 2015, it seemed that Manziel wanted out of Cleveland so that he could land with the Cowboys. But the Cowboys won’t even consider him until he gets his life in order. With no one else wanting Manziel either, that could be the thing he needs.
“If Johnny doesn’t have a carrot dangling in front of him, he resorts to his default,” a friend of Manziel’s told Kaplan. “And his default is not giving a sh-t.”
It’s unclear whether Manziel even sees the carrot. He recently told TMZ “of course” he’ll play in 2016. That doesn’t sound like a guy who understands that no one is willing to give Manziel his next second chance, unless he makes serious changes. But with no one in position to persuade Manziel that serious changes need to be made, the process can never commence.