Johnny Manziel is a liar.
That’s what Browns head coach Mike Pettine is said to believe and that’s why the former Heisman Trophy winner, who the Browns drafted in the first round 19 months ago – and who threw for 372 yards against the Steelers just 18 days ago, is still not the team’s starting quarterback, even after Josh McCown went down with another injury.
McCown’s latest physical malady, broken ribs, will shelve him for the season, but instead of giving Manziel the final five weeks of the season under center to see if he’s the future in Cleveland, the Browns are going to journeyman Austin Davis, their 24th starting quarterback since 1999. Davis isn’t starting because Pettine thinks he might be the quarterback savior Cleveland has many waiting for lo these many decades. (Although his 86.5 quarterback rating in 11 career appearances mean he’s probably better than most of The 24 who played for the Browns.) And Davis isn’t starting because he gives Cleveland the best chance to win on Sunday.
If you recall, before Cleveland’s week 10 game in Pittsburgh, Pettine said: “We’re tasked as coaches to put the roster out there that’s going to give us the best opportunity to win.” He started Manziel that week – not Davis, not McCown – and Manziel proceeded to go up and down the field against the Steelers. If Pettine wanted to give his 2-9 team the best chance to get a third win, Manziel would still be in there.
No, Davis is starting simply because he’s the only healthy quarterback left on the Browns roster who isn’t Johnny Manziel. Davis is starting because he wasn’t partying and holding a bottle of Champagne in Austin, Texas, during Cleveland’s bye two weekends ago. Davis is starting because he wasn’t on TMZ.
The TMZ video hit the internet on 23 November, Manziel came out with some sorry excuse that he didn’t know when the video was from, he reportedly told his friends to lie to the Browns about the weekend, and that was that. If Manziel was going to make up a terrible story like a kid getting caught coming in after curfew, Pettine decided he was going to treat him like a dumb kid, too, and essentially grounded him from playing quarterback in the NFL for an indefinite number of weeks, no matter how much it hurt the Browns or hurt Pettine’s waning chances to keep his job after this season.
But pathetic, little, cover up stories about going out in his college town on a free week is not what will haunt him the rest of his football career. The comments that will follow him around forever are the ones he told back in April when he got out of rehab:
Browns QB Johnny Manziel released the following statement. pic.twitter.com/Bb1fzQEBJv
— NFL on ESPN (@ESPNNFL) April 17, 2015
“What I’ve learned in the last couple of months has been tremendous.” “I owe private apologies to a lot of people that I disappointed.” “I take full responsibility for my actions and it’s my intention to work very hard to regain everyone’s trust and respect.”
Oh, Johnny. No.
Did anyone actually believe any of that? Outside of Mike Pettine, at least?
Manziel likes to party. He likes to go out with friends. He likes to surround himself with beautiful women. He likes to drink and make stupid faces and listen to bad music. None of that is illegal. Same as how it wasn’t illegal when Brett Favre did it. Or when Mickey Mantle did it. Or when Babe Ruth did it or countless other players from the past went out after a day on the job as a professional athlete. Only those guys lived their lives before social media and TMZ made an athlete’s every movement and drink order public consumption. Ruth is a legend for fuelling his career on hot dogs and beer. Today, he would be forced into giving a tearful TV interview to swear off all sulfites and hops for the rest of his days, lest he lose all his endorsement deals.
Those close to Manziel who knew him best were pleased that he spent some time in the offseason getting his priorities in order. That’s great. He must have needed it. But when he left rehab and made all those comments about “responsibility” and all the people he “disappointed,” that’s where things went awry. Those statements sound like something an advisor worrying about PR and optics would tell him to say, not anything the real Manziel would say. It almost felt like Manziel had the same inept PR advisor who told Tiger Woods to go to “sex rehab” for “sex addiction.”
But Manziel’s statement set a new bar for him: that he would comport himself at all times as a chaste teetotaler. That he’d act like a 40 year-old man with kids and not a 22 year-old single and famous millionaire. That he would not be, in any way, who he is. And so now anytime someone takes a picture of him with a single drink in his hand, he feels the need to come up with an elaborate cover story to line up with the words some image advisor told him to put in a statement back in April. His improved play on the field proves that he’s doing what he needs to do on and off the field. But those comments he made after rehab still haunt him.
Manziel’s statement should have read, in its entirety: “I have been working to get my priorities in order. I still intend to live my life and spend time with my friends, but being the best quarterback I can be will be my primary focus. Thank you.” That would have been enough for the Browns, and the reporters and most of the hand-wringing/outrage crowd on social media. And best of all, a statement like that still would have allowed Manziel to, you know, have a drink when he’s visiting his old college town on vacation.
But Manziel messed up. He blew it. So while he’s not the Browns starting quarterback, he’s still very much a Cleveland Brown.
