Former NFL quarterback Johnny Manziel deleted his Twitter account on Monday shortly after tweeting advice to US president Donald Trump.
“Yo, POTUS even I know to stay away from the notifications section on twitter. Shit will drive you crazy, lead the country and let them hate,” Manziel tweeted Monday afternoon, followed by a tweet that read: “Control what you can control and let the rest fall by the wayside.”
The tweets came three days after Manziel said he’s achieved sobriety on his own and is determined to resume his career as a NFL quarterback.
“I refuse to let my entire life of sports from the age of four be squandered by partying,” Manziel said in a message sent Friday to ESPN’s Ed Werder. “I just got sick of it. One day I didn’t like what I saw in the mirror and realized I could really help people in the position I’m in.
“I love sports, I love football and when you take something away from yourself you realize it the hard way. The happiness from doing it sober has been astronomical. Beyond my wildest imagination and once that continued other good things started happening in my life and it just clicked.”
Manziel was to the point when asked his immediate goal: “Play football. A pre-season game, anything I don’t care what it is. Only need one team to believe in me and I’ll do anything to make that a possibility.”
The message to Werder came one day after Manziel, who confessed to being a “douche” in 2016, said that he’s “just trying to be a good person again” in a series of tweets.
Manziel slipped down to No22 in the 2014 NFL draft due to concerns over his size, though Trump was among those who believed in his professional prospects.
Teams are making a big mistake not taking Johnny Manziel - he is going to be really good (and exciting to watch).
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 9, 2014
He checked into rehab for undisclosed problems at the end of his rookie season but his conduct did not improve. In November, Manziel was benched after a video emerged of him partying at a nightclub a month after he was pulled over by police while arguing with his then-girlfriend.
The Browns coach at the time, Mike Pettine, said: “I don’t think we anticipated that his problems, his issues, how deep-rooted they were, the extent of it.”
The Texas A&M alum was suspended for the first four games of the 2016 season for violating the NFL’s substance abuse policy, but the punishment was never formally served after the Browns released him in March.
He reached a deal with the Dallas County district attorney’s office for the conditional dismissal of a domestic assault case, where he was accused of hitting and threatening his former girlfriend during a night out last January.
It was unclear if the deletion of Manziel’s verified account, which had more than 1.73m followers on Monday afternoon, was related to the Trump tweets. A spokesperson for the 24-year-old told ESPN: “He told me [Twitter is] not a priority and he’s trying to eliminate distractions.”
