Just how good at football is Johnny Manziel these days?
That’s really the question with so much buzz surrounding the possibility that the ex-Browns QB might go from out-of-work quarterback to a member of the Alliance of American Football league (AAF), especially with news that he was offered a workout.
For the answer to a purely football question, we have to the tape and his stats from the CFL, which banned him this week after the Montreal Alouettes were told to terminate his contract.
Remember, Johnny Football won the Heisman Trophy back in 2012. And although the rules in the CFL are different, the numbers still don’t lie: Manziel wasn’t all that good.
In eight games for the Alouettes, he completed 106-of-165 passes (a 64.2 completion percentage, an improvement over his 57 percent with Cleveland, but it still wouldn’t be top-20 in the NFL last season) with five touchdowns and seven interceptions.
Four of those picks came in his first game in Week 8 last season, but he also only had one game all year in which he threw more than one touchdown.
Let’s go to the video tape:
Here’s the four-INT game. Yikes.
He’s still nimble on his feet, that’s for sure. But there’s a wobbly pass in there that ended up as a completion, and while I’m no film expert like my colleague Steven Ruiz, there’s another completion where a receiver has to come back for an underthrown ball.
You’ll see a fumble at the goal line after a hard hit. But there are some decent throws here.
This is from his first win — again, you have to like how good he is running the ball. But is any of that attributable to a wider field to work with?
My verdict: Sure, let’s see what he’s got in the AAF, a league where Christian Hackenberg got benched. Even if Manziel’s football skills aren’t exactly NFL-ready, remember what AAF chairman Tom Dundon said: ” The positive is that he brings in fans and attention.”
